Once again, it is an Open Mic week! Chat amongst yourselves while I catch up on the 957 emails that have collected in my in-box…
Once again, it is an Open Mic week! Chat amongst yourselves while I catch up on the 957 emails that have collected in my in-box…
The End is Nigh!
I’m writing the last, epilogue-like chapter of the big long WIP. Normally I get a dash to the end when finishing a first draft. Not this time. I’m also cringing about the possibility of the revision turning into a reprise of the year-plus revision/timeline surgery I struggled with before.
I’m also still poking at my idea for a collection of holiday stories in the same alt-history setting.
And on the wicked side, I have a side-project of kinky-erotic fairy tales. I’ve done “Ruby-Red Riding Hood,” and certain people who’ve seen it wanted a sequel. So I’m in the middle of a sort of “Red Riding-Hood meets the Frog Prince.” story. (She has to break the curse that keeps him confined in his Tower – if he leaves it, he’ll turn into a hop-toad without any hope of ever getting changed back.)
I am still struggling with the WIP. After going to COsine in Colorado Springs, I became convinced that I’m starting in the wrong place and doing too much scene-setting, but when I try to revise I bog down in considerations of what the readers need to know, and if I don’t put it right at the beginning then when, and how many flashbacks can one novel support? I think I’ll just push on ahead and stop obsessing over the opening.
There’s always revision
For me at least, this usually means I don’t know what information the reader needs to know upfront yet and that’s my subconscious brain telling me come back later. I highly recommend treating it like you would a tough math question on a test: plow ahead and come back when you get the lightbulb.
Could you please give advise for returning to a project you haven’t touched in a while?
I have a story where I got a draft done but I feel at least the worldbuilding needs to come through better. However real life intervened and now I haven’t touched the story in ages, and getting back to it feels like a huge task.
It might be helpful to think of it this way:
Though starting an altogether new project my feel fresh and exciitng, that would be an even huger task than coming back to something that’s been fermenting a while. At least in the latter case, one has something established to springboard off of and back into the thick of things.
In my neck of the woods, this is the time for canon review. Basically, reconsume your project in a reading mindset, reading all your notes and draft you have, then do whatever it is you do to get excited about a project again if necessary, whether that’s brainstorm more material or start free writing or noodle on the fresh read, etc.
I look forward to see what kind of post she writes on this. Canon review is an absolute dire necessity for me when writing because I constantly dream up series worth of worlds in a few days, and no way in life I can write that fast, regardless of whether I take breaks or not, but in practice, I always do if it’s longer than a short story.
Listening to music while thinking on a story I just reread from also helps me.
It is a big task. However, you may be pleasantly surprised at how good the rough draft is! The story’s clearly meaningful to you, so I’d say jump in.
I philosophically note that of all holidays, Halloween, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and St. Valentine’s Day are the easiest to have a story thematically fit in with. Hmm — I shall tout one of mine for Valentine’s!
Several candidates but I settle on — “Over the Sea, To Me.”
https://www.amazon.com/Over-Sea-Me-Mary-Catelli-ebook/dp/B00ROPS6PA/
Or many other fine online venues
I’ve found Christmas to be easy to write stories about – I already had three Christmas stories written for the setting before deciding to do the ‘holiday’ series of stories.
Wikipedia gives a list of the 10 most commonly celebrated holidays in the US, which was a useful place for me to start. Halloween, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day are important in the alt-history too, although with Mother’s Day becoming more a mother-daughter day and Father’s Day a father-son day.
Columbus Day is a more important and somewhat altered holiday in the alt-history: Half the alt-US celebrates it as “Indian Summer Day,” which is a sort of a “I have American Indian ancestry” variation of St. Patrick’s Day.
And there’s a whisper in my back-brain about maybe including some alt-history versions of non-US holidays. (Guy Fawkes Day?)
Christmas doesn’t lend itself to plots as easily. Halloween gives you the monster, and the other three gives you two characters for free.
Not saying the others are hard, but they are the easiest.
Christmas has christmas trees, other christmas decorations, christmas gift giving, christmas caroling, christmas foods and drinks, and generally a bigger bundle of customs and traditions than other holidays. That makes it easier to give a story a Christmas theme (which I see as something different from “plot.”) It also makes it less difficult (not easy because plot is never easy, but less difficult) to generate a plot, what with people doing those different and unusual things that they don’t do the rest of the year.
I suspect that this is just plumb plain highly subjective. I find Valentines and Christmas easiest to write about, don’t write about monsters or halloween ever, and I have a million characters, but no holiday automatically tells me which ones are best served by a particular premise, only which roles they have to have already tacked onto their pile of hats.
I think Mother’s Day and Father’s Day would be great to write for though, and I’m sorry I hadn’t thought of them sooner! If only I weren’t wholly occupied writing two books and don’t have time to engage with that. Sigh.
Late to the party as usual, but, in keeping with the holiday talk, I’m delighted to say that I have finally written Venturesome Sheep Day!
It’s ready for beta-readers; if anyone would be interested in doing that (or would just like to read it for your own amusement, that’s fine too), please drop me a line at hv24hk2pdm AUTON liamekaens DALEK com (replacing the obvious alien invaders with the appropriate punctuation).