STAY CALM AND KEEP WRITING

I've been so crazy busy doing Things That Are Not Writing lately that I haven't had time to stop and take stock of what I'm writing, where it is, and why it's stalled.

So, a brief update.

Laina - YA urban fantasy

Laina has stalled and been stalled for weeks. I can't seem to bring myself to keep writing her - part of me keeps saying that I'm not writing enough action and that people will get bored with my detailed prose.

I like detailed prose - all the little hints, tips, and tricks that point in the direction of the ending. The Chekov's Gun on the wall, the foreshadowing, the importance of prophecy...

Some writers - writers I really admire - manage to pluck half a dozen words out that describe the scene perfectly, and then get on with the action.

I feel like I need half a page to set the scene. At least.

And I think writing Laina as a character scares me: it's been so long since I was a teenager, and I don't think I was 'normal' by common standards of teenager-ism. Am I getting her right? Is she 'young' enough? What am I missing in her depiction?

Elly and Carlos - "The Shadowkin" - Supernatural Action/Adventure Romance

Elly and Carlos have sort of become the first chapter in a five part epic which ends in the attempted assassination of the US president after the assassination of an international leader by a member of the US military. (He's got a secondary agenda, of course.)

I'm just not sure how to write their conflict as being...conflicty. And exactly who the bad guys are and their motives (the Big Bad, as we would say) is a bit blurry. I have the Petty Evil down pat (Henchmen) but the Big Bad is tricksy: they have to believe that what they're doing is the right option, and for the time that I'm writing them, I have to believe that too, or else the audience is never going to accept that.

And, reading my current string of paranormal romance novels (Nalini Singh's Psy-Changeling series), I have this sneaking suspicion that I can't write the kind of instant-attraction romances that actually sell.

You know the ones I mean.

Eyes meet across a crowded room, lovingly detailed descriptions of how hot the characters are, the sexual tension rising like a kettle on the boil, and the intricate and sensuous blow-by-blow sex scenes. Okay, so maybe I can write the blow-by-blow sex, but the rest of it feels like it eludes me.

My female characters are not the breathless sort as a general rule, and Elly is not the kind to get swept off her feet by a dark handsome stranger whose eyes she meets across a crowded room.

On the other hand, he does save her life within minutes of meeting her and she does fluster a little under his attraction. She just tells herself not to stay calm and be friendly.

Mostly, I'm worried about making it OTT, and worried about underselling the attraction.

I may worry too much.

Sparrow - "The CLockwork Dragon" - YA steampunk fantasy

I started the Chinese Steampunk the other day. I'm beginning to think that this story might end up taking the form of a Hero's journey with a genderswapped narrative theme: where the Hero is actually female. Start off an artisan's daughter, end up hope of the Empire!

To be honest, the land is not explicitly Chinese, but a lot of the concepts and societal structures, cities, mythology, and backgrounds are going to be taken from Chinese and East Asian culture. Including ninjas. Because everything is better with ninjas!

various fanfics

And then there's the fanfic, which I've been neglecting. Until the due dates turned up in the last week and I realised I had a bunch of things to get in and hadn't touched any of them.

1. 1000 words, female-centric - DONE.
2. 1000 words, genfic - due 10th May OMG BEARS
3. 10,000 words, reversebang - due 13th May OMG BEARS
4. 10,000 words, big bang - due 17th June OMG BEARS

In short: threat level - BEARS.

Book Review: So You Want To Be A Wizard

I have a book review up at Writers' Tea Party for the first book in Diane Duane's Young Wizards series, So You Want To Be A Wizard.


Book Review by Sel: So You Want To Be A Wizard

It's not a famous book or a particularly popular one, but I love it very much, because the book - and the series - is not only well-written but contains some wonderful philosophical concepts of life, the universe, and how we see the world and our place in it.

I particularly like it because I first read it at age twenty-seven, and while it was targeted at the YA audience, it never spoke down to them or treated them like they couldn't understand what was going on. If anything, the book (and subsequent series) assumes its readers are intelligent, thoughtful people, who want to make a difference - just as its main characters do.

This isn't the dysfunctional struggles of Katniss' society in the Hunger Games, nor the wonder and magic of Harry Potter or Percy Jackson: this is the real world...difficult and complicated, but with hope.

It was written thirty years ago now, in a political, social, technical, and economic climate far different from the one we stand in now, but I think that the people reading the story haven't changed all that much - we're still human with all our dreams and all our nightmares: the best of us and the worst of us.

And a message with hope of a better future and our part in it will always speak to all generations.

introduction

"A writer isn't one person pretending to be many people,
but many people pretending to be one."
I speak jokingly of 'the voices in my head' and have for a great many years now, so this quotation resonates with me at a gut level.

From the dancing-singing quartet I wrote about back when I was ten, to the current novel I'm working on, I've always had other people wandering about in my head.

Occasionally they managed to break out onto the page, but many have bided their time through the years, waiting, watching, wanting that glimpse of reality that my expression can give them.

Maybe they'll have their day. Maybe they'll sink into the depths of my grey matter as the Dance Group quartet did, their time come and gone with the years and my childhood. Or maybe they'll find their footing, climb up through the torturous vestiges of my brain to reach the light of day (or the glow of the computer screen?) and find shape and form on the page - and perhaps someday not just form on the page, but in other people's minds as they read my published stories.

We can hope.