I'm Almost There
Jan. 18th, 2010 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anthimeriaDefinitely felt like I've been on a precipice for a couple of weeks. The research for Skywatch was driving me mad; I got really tired of reading about colonialism. Once the anger, frustration, and distasteful residue of the expansionist history of the nineteenth century wore off, though, I settled back down to finish worldbuilding and outlining.
Y'all (I say as if anyone reads this blog) are lucky my internet has been acting up. Otherwise there would have been a number of rant-y posts about the impossibility of writing a mystery, the looming shadow of history, and trying to research Islam in an American public library. Don't get me wrong, I love my library, but weeding through the ridiculousness to find a couple of unbiased, frank, simple books was a headache.
At the end of the day it was the mystery genre that defeated me. I had to step away from the outline for about a week. After trying and trying, I have a TON of respect for people who write mysteries, and the outline of an adventure/mystery/thriller. Sort of. Safe to say its primary genre is steampunk, and there is an investigation, and flying around the City, and clandestine raids on offices, and a race to save the City. The story contains a mystery but isn't mystery, if that makes sense. I'm all on the edge right now because Skywatch's outline is being looked over by another writer (I would like to AVOID needing to write a new end, this time) and The Novel still hasn't returned from my editors, so I'm left without longterm projects.
With Skywatch almost ready to write, though, I have a couple of other projects I'm gearing up: worldbuilding and characterbuilding for what might be the novel after Skywatch, as well as buckling down to the job hunt. Sadly, I do not yet get paid for my writing, so I need another way to feed myself.
The book I'm tentatively exploring, which I'll write after Skywatch, is a superhero story, and it's been long enough since I worked in that genre that I'd forgotten how much I love it. And how much I love working in the modern era--both Skywatch and The Novel are historical, so being able to have a worldbuilding framework without needing a month of historical research is wonderful. My MC's superpowers are giving me a headache (as in, I can't figure out what they are. Do I go cliche strength/invulnerability/flight, do I go intriguing aerokinesis, do I go wacky hardened skin and telekinesis?), but while almost every single detail is fuzzy, I feel like the sweeping generalizations are all there, which is pretty much how I started with Skywatch and The Novel. I've had that feeling fail me, but not too often. It's also an exciting thing because I'm on the edge (see what I mean about precipices?) of being in that ideal writer's space, working on three projects at once: one in building, one in rough draft, one in editing.
In a completely unrelated note, I finally found time to see "The Princess and the Frog," and it is a movie made of wonderfulness. Tiana has a song called "Almost There" that I've already nearly memorized.
Y'all (I say as if anyone reads this blog) are lucky my internet has been acting up. Otherwise there would have been a number of rant-y posts about the impossibility of writing a mystery, the looming shadow of history, and trying to research Islam in an American public library. Don't get me wrong, I love my library, but weeding through the ridiculousness to find a couple of unbiased, frank, simple books was a headache.
At the end of the day it was the mystery genre that defeated me. I had to step away from the outline for about a week. After trying and trying, I have a TON of respect for people who write mysteries, and the outline of an adventure/mystery/thriller. Sort of. Safe to say its primary genre is steampunk, and there is an investigation, and flying around the City, and clandestine raids on offices, and a race to save the City. The story contains a mystery but isn't mystery, if that makes sense. I'm all on the edge right now because Skywatch's outline is being looked over by another writer (I would like to AVOID needing to write a new end, this time) and The Novel still hasn't returned from my editors, so I'm left without longterm projects.
With Skywatch almost ready to write, though, I have a couple of other projects I'm gearing up: worldbuilding and characterbuilding for what might be the novel after Skywatch, as well as buckling down to the job hunt. Sadly, I do not yet get paid for my writing, so I need another way to feed myself.
The book I'm tentatively exploring, which I'll write after Skywatch, is a superhero story, and it's been long enough since I worked in that genre that I'd forgotten how much I love it. And how much I love working in the modern era--both Skywatch and The Novel are historical, so being able to have a worldbuilding framework without needing a month of historical research is wonderful. My MC's superpowers are giving me a headache (as in, I can't figure out what they are. Do I go cliche strength/invulnerability/flight, do I go intriguing aerokinesis, do I go wacky hardened skin and telekinesis?), but while almost every single detail is fuzzy, I feel like the sweeping generalizations are all there, which is pretty much how I started with Skywatch and The Novel. I've had that feeling fail me, but not too often. It's also an exciting thing because I'm on the edge (see what I mean about precipices?) of being in that ideal writer's space, working on three projects at once: one in building, one in rough draft, one in editing.
In a completely unrelated note, I finally found time to see "The Princess and the Frog," and it is a movie made of wonderfulness. Tiana has a song called "Almost There" that I've already nearly memorized.