The Psychology of Writing Coma Wedding
Nov. 26th, 2008 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marfiskHmm, well, it's interesting this...
I completed NaNo on 11/21, a bit late for some years, a bit early for the goal. That's the good part.
The bad part is that I have stopped dead.
I've had some questions about this novel because in some ways it is very much a straight contemporary despite the odd paranormal elements. This would make my third completed contemporary novel...once I complete it...but my belief is that I want to do more fantastical SF or fantasy.
So why is it that these contemporary ideas grab hold and won't let go? The answer must be that a part of me loves these stories. At least that's the answer that I came to.
I thought about how I felt not when thinking about the story from a distance but when I'm writing, when I'm in the characters' heads.
See, my SF and fantasy tends to be hard hitting. I tend to make my characters work for everything and cut the support out from under them at least once. In my contemporary stories, it's more about the positive people parts. It's about how people come together, what pulls them apart and what makes them hold on. All of my contemporaries are happy stories. They might have low points, but nothing like what I put the characters through in my speculative fiction.
So I'm thrilled (?) to discover the cause of my writing drop off is bronchitis. It has nothing at all to do with the story.
The ultimate answer is that both types of stories fill something within me. I like the sappy romantic stories as much as the traumatic, realign-my-world stories. This shouldn't come as any surprise because I read that same spread for the different moods, nor should the pull of a sweet story have startled me considering I was coming off a rough year. That might even be why I couldn't pull off writing Karth's Story earlier this year because that one is a gut-wrencher on many levels.
I guess this post is more about psychology than writing, but there you have it. The good news is that I fully expect as soon as the elephant gets off my chest, words for Coma Wedding will start pouring out.
And stats:
67 scenes
37 complete - 55% of the novel
30 Scenes remain
39,242 Remaining word count
87,640 Estimated length - with an average of 1,308 words per scene.
48,398 Current Total
I completed NaNo on 11/21, a bit late for some years, a bit early for the goal. That's the good part.
The bad part is that I have stopped dead.
I've had some questions about this novel because in some ways it is very much a straight contemporary despite the odd paranormal elements. This would make my third completed contemporary novel...once I complete it...but my belief is that I want to do more fantastical SF or fantasy.
So why is it that these contemporary ideas grab hold and won't let go? The answer must be that a part of me loves these stories. At least that's the answer that I came to.
I thought about how I felt not when thinking about the story from a distance but when I'm writing, when I'm in the characters' heads.
See, my SF and fantasy tends to be hard hitting. I tend to make my characters work for everything and cut the support out from under them at least once. In my contemporary stories, it's more about the positive people parts. It's about how people come together, what pulls them apart and what makes them hold on. All of my contemporaries are happy stories. They might have low points, but nothing like what I put the characters through in my speculative fiction.
So I'm thrilled (?) to discover the cause of my writing drop off is bronchitis. It has nothing at all to do with the story.
The ultimate answer is that both types of stories fill something within me. I like the sappy romantic stories as much as the traumatic, realign-my-world stories. This shouldn't come as any surprise because I read that same spread for the different moods, nor should the pull of a sweet story have startled me considering I was coming off a rough year. That might even be why I couldn't pull off writing Karth's Story earlier this year because that one is a gut-wrencher on many levels.
I guess this post is more about psychology than writing, but there you have it. The good news is that I fully expect as soon as the elephant gets off my chest, words for Coma Wedding will start pouring out.
And stats:
67 scenes
37 complete - 55% of the novel
30 Scenes remain
39,242 Remaining word count
87,640 Estimated length - with an average of 1,308 words per scene.
48,398 Current Total
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-27 12:06 pm (UTC)Hey - I stopped dead at 50,017. I think it's because I pushed to get the goal. Anyway, I took a couple of days to both recover and examine what I had/ what I needed / etc.
I realized that one of my supporting characters was all wrong, so she's changed and I still need to hone what my magic is like. It's starting to come back.
Feel better soon.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-30 09:49 pm (UTC)I figure I'll start writing again tomorrow :). It might be one day too late for NaNo, but I got my 50 so it doesn't much matter.