On The Prowl
I’ve moved on!
My first MS has been tucked away for the moment. I’ll probably come back to it in a month or so, but for now I’ve hit my wall with it.
It’s now officially time for me to find a new love.
I’ve been trolling the creative recesses of my brain.
It’s strange. While I was writing my story, I felt like I couldn’t shut down the new ideas. I would get them while I was driving; I would get them while I was sleeping. I would write them down and leave them safe and sound in a notebook somewhere like a good dedicated writer.
But, now that I have more time to look at those ideas more fully, I realize they aren’t right. They’re like boys you meet at clubs. It’s dark; they’re dressed their best; you’re looking for the next best thing; and well, there’s generally something to impair judgment involved. In the light of day, these flings (whether with new ideas or late-night dance partners) don’t hold up to closer scrutiny.
So, I’m on the hunt again.
It’s both freeing and disconcerting to be at the starting point again. Energizing and frightening.
On one hand, I can do as I initially planned. There are a couple of secondary characters in my first story that I can revisit and give them their own spotlight. The drawback is that I’m ridiculously sick of these people. They’re houseguests that stayed too long; they’ve been occupying my brain so long that if I don’t see them any time soon, it’ll be fine.
But, disregarding them has left me with an identity crisis. Do I want to write a straight historical? Do I want to write something contemporary? Do I want to write a paranormal?
I’m not sure yet.
Right now I’m leaning towards a straight paranormal, mostly because that’s where all my most interesting (to me) ideas seem to be. I like the idea of writing something contemporary, just to see if my voice fits there.
The beauty of all this is that I can stretch and see how I do.
I love being an artist.
So, how did the idea for your story come to you? Have you experimented with different genres? If not, ever think you will? Do you like the beginning planning phase or do you find it frightening? Anyone else ever felt that way about guys in clubs?
Books by the Crew
40 comments:
Ah, ideas. I dream 'em. Honestly. More than 50% of my stories come from my dreams. Now, where the dreams come from? A gift from the Goddess... I'm a lucid dreamer and wake up just enough to follow and direct and play around...and hopefully, find something I want to write.
Though my present biggie came from the two shows on a few months ago about what happens to the earth after people disappear...liked that one, a lot! It's the next big project...
The hardest phase? The end. Beginings come easy for me, but endings are hell. That's when I break out the rum...
My stories usually come from a character that I somehow imagine.
I knew Jinan was a harem girl, and she was protecting the identity of her son by playing the Turkish princess. I knew her husband sold her. Rothburn I didn't even know until I had written half the book. I think I was lucky the story told itself.
With Thaddeus, I know he's a struggling composer. I know why he's struggling. Rosalie, I knew she was a cyprian and blind. I knew how she became blind.
My ideas come from my characters I guess. I can give a very long history as to who they are, how they came to be in their position so on and so forth.
I like new stories (even if they are taking me longer than normal to write---abs)
And yes, I've done diff genres, I think it helped me better define my voice. I've done para-historical, contemp-para-erotica, and now I'm stuck in historical... mind you I like being stuck there.
I'm at the beginning, and I love it, because I DON'T know anything. Each day the characters become more alive to me. I don't plot, but I actually wrote down (in my good writer notebook) possible scenes and the cast. It helps that my heroine had a walk-on in two previous things, but I've got to make sure there's continuity.
I'd have to say my creative process is mostly accidental, filled with eureka moments and more than my share of WTF have I done moments.I'm sure your eureka will occur shortly!
Good luck, Marn!!
I love when just an image, or a sentence...something really small, can spark a whole scene, and from there hopefully something more. I LOVE IT!
Chance - Those shows were really cool! The DH and I watched them, fascinated. :) And I wasn't a huge fan of the end either. I pretty much vomited it out. (Is that the proper usage?)
Good morning Vixens! :)
Tiff - I've been thinking about characters a lot too. I think what I'm kinda doing is world building and the characters are coming out of that. I definitely don't do storyline first and then come up with characters from there. Though I do hear some do it that way....
Well, I keep logging in but this dang thing won't recognize me. Hate when that happens.
I haven't written a word since July and my brain has been fully occupied with school, conference planning and now party planning. Oh, and there was a boy in there somewhere, but he's taken a hike. The last big event is tomorrow and I am looking SO forward to getting my brain back. Or what's left of it anyway.
I told all that to tell this. I can't remember the last time I had a new idea. I was getting them pretty frequently there for a while, but the well seems to have dried up. I think I got one back in late October, but as usual didn't write it down and it's gone now. Maybe it'll come back.
I think my favorite part is when I'm far enough into a story to feel like I know the characters and I know what I want to happen. That is the fun part. Fleshing them out is cool, but that's when I write all kinds of stuff that gets pretty much trashed. And I haven't gotten to the end of anything but a short story and now I didn't like writing that ending. It just wasn't as much fun to end as it was to begin.
The good thing is, there's always time to come up with more. I know ideas will come again. I just need to get one of those little notebooks so I make sure I keep them when they do. LOL!
Marn - I can't wait to see what you do next. You're the inspiration that keeps this vessal afloat!
Maggie - I love listening to you pantsers talk about your creative process. I wish I was as "go with the flow" as you guys are. That sort of open ended stuff just gives me heartburn. I'm so happy it works for you guys though. Good luck with your new project!!
Hey JK! - I love those snippets too! Little feelings and vibes that send my mind in different directions. Isn't this whole process so much fun?!
*LOL* That's do accurate about club guys. *LOL* And new ideas. And I do love beginnings...real beginnings, where you don't know "the person". It's true infatuation to draw you in deep enough that by the time you realize you're sick of this person, you've stuck it out too long to back out now.
Infatuation cannot happen which characters you've already met and have turned into that Owen Wilson character from You, Me & Dupree. Charming, perhaps, but if you could leave them on the highway and never see them again, that'd be great too.
I love when I'm mulling over an idea, something with "potential" and suddenly a scene pops out of it. Something really tragic, or something really funny. It has to be REALLY something. Like with Lucifer, the first scene I imagined that really made me think this could work was the "Elizabeth dies" scene--and Lucifer is devastated. I could picture the whole thing and the scenes that followed it. It was like watching a movie. And with GOGU, I was thinking about Ben--or more likely I was thinking about the guy who Ben is prototyped after--and thought, "It really amazes me at times he isn't shot. What if he was? What if it comes as a surprise to the heroine too--and yet it's not a surprise? And who shot him?" I had a whole Who Shot JR moment.
I'm waiting for a "scene" to occur to me. I haven't had any good scenes play for me lately. I've probably been too damned happy.
Ter - you'll get going again. You've just been so busy being super productive. :) I do swear by the notebook, though. I keep on in my purse so I can write stuff down wherever I am. It's incredibly helpful, especially when your brain is a sieve like mine. And thanks for the vote of confidence. We'll see how things go.
I think I am going to do a lot more plotting than I even did before this time around. I think I work best if I do it that way and then just edit as I go. *ducking as the captain throws a rum bottle at my head screaming, "AS IF!!"*
Hellion - I think you're right about the already existing characters. I love them in their own way, but I know them too well for a true infatuation. Maybe the love I have for them is the true kind that will make me want to revisit them soon, but right now I'm just sick of them. Owen Wilson in You, Me, and Dupree is absolutely accurate.
And being too happy to be seeing fake people in your head isn't a bad thing at all....
I won't throw rum bottles today. You finished your book, remember? Besides, it's how Anne Gracie writes her books...so who's to say editing as you go is altogether bad, so long as you finish the book?
Teresa Medeiros says she does it that way too.
I think that vomiting out if you get stuck is the way to go. That's how I did it when I writer's blocked. But I think it would work better for me if I could plan a lot of it instead.
We'll see. Who knows?
Marn,
I tend to write like Maggie, and maybe a little like Terri.
My ideas come from all over. I tend to get first lines, like-
“Promises should never be made under duress or otherwise. I am not the same man I was a year ago. Nor can I guarantee I will be the same tomorrow as I am today.”
That is the first line of the first chapter of The Highlander's Obsession. I knew my hero was tied to a chair, and I knew my heroine held him captive. I also knew they had a relationship that he had walked away from.
The Highlander's Hellion came from schooling my kids. We were discussing King James and I delved further into him, discovering he wasn't even close to being the nicest guy in the world.
Cherish Me, a western I'm working on came from a dream.
And recently, I have this line that won't go away.
The sacrifice, still bloodied from her mother's womb, squalled when the priest laid her upon the alter.
I know the woman watching this, the heroine, she's standing at the top of a ziggurat about to be married. The sacrificial child is to bless the union. Don't stone me, I won't let it happen, at least I don't think I will.
Renee
Like Chance, I see a lot of my stuff in dreams. I'm a very vivid dreamer. I saw a girl laying in the middle of a dead end street just as dawn was getting ready to rise over the horizon and my hero, torn whether to risk his ass and save her or let her die. Hellion asked me why I wasn't at the gym and I told her I had to go home and write notes. LOL
And we all know how I found Sadie. She found me.
I say write whatever your heart desires babe. The canvas is blank, but you know it won't be for long.
Renee - wow, these are great lines! :) Though I swear, if a baby is sacrified in the first lines of your story, I'm going to hold a grudge.
I think mine aren't so much flashes of lines but flashes of scenes. Not even scenes sometimes, but emotions. Then I try to draw the words around those emotions.
Sin - Wow, yay saving a dying girl. I can't wait to read that. :) I love me a blank canvas too. I'm sort of just enjoying the blank canvas right now, reading lots of stuff too, to give myself a backdrop.
And vivid dreams, huh? That sounds like fun.....
Fallon walks away from her; then he hears the tiniest of whimpers from her and he goes back.
*shaking head* Not really. When I'm writing they get vivid enough to keep me from actually sleeping. I mean, I'm out, dreaming, but my dreams let me have no rest. Eventually I wear out and lose my creativity. It's a vicious circle.
But I can't say that I hate them. Because they give me the sight I need in order to write. Without it, I don't know if my imagination would be vivid enough to draw the picture out through words on a page.
I swear, nothing keeps me from sleeping these days. LOL!
And Fallon sounds very alpha. I'm already digging him.
I love the name Fallon.
Yes *drool* me loves some alpha in my life... I mean fiction. *g*
I've never slept well. Even sleeping pills don't put me out.
I loves me some alpha too, girl. :) LOL!!
And I agree with Renee. Fallon is an awesome name.
Thank you wenches :D
Fallon's name came very easily to me. So did Cin's. Someone challenged me to write a paranoraml short last year and I wrote it about them. It was really dark and I fell in love.
How cool is that. I love challenges, for the most part. I think it's my competitiveness. They also get me thinking and Loki (my muse) talking.
Renee
Your muse has a name? :) Awesome.
And Cin is an awesome name for a heroine too....
*LOL* Loki is a very appropriate Muse name, considering he's the Nordic god of mischief and trouble. *LOL*
LOL! That is appropriate.
Take care with tricksters! I have Coyote sniffing around me on a regular basis and sometimes it's just exhausting! Learning life lessons while flat on my face in a ditch, courtesy of his machinations, gets old. It is effective, though...
I don't find my lucid dreaming tiring, but I don't have a 9-5 so if I'm kept from healing sleep, I just don't get up...
I loved those The Day People Disappeared shows. But they didn't address what happened to the nuclear power plants without water...or the tankers full of oil suddenly adrift, the chemicals in mid-experiment...lots of toxic oops not addressed.
Not that my book goes there. It's about a part of the population that finds itself in the midst of the ruins... How? That's the fun!
I'm not sick of my characters yet. I think I really see my trilogy as one long book, so the story won't seem complete to me until I finish book 3.
I can't write linearly. I've tried, but my mind doesn't operate that way. I start with the characters. TLWH started with one scene--a woman standing at the window weeping. I didn't know who she was or why she was crying. Then Max, complete with name and profession, was just there in my head, saying, "I know. I'll tell you her story."
I love the stage where the characters are giving me bits and pieces, sometimes faster than I can write them down. I hate, hate, HATE the stitch-together scenes where I have to fit the bits and pieces together in some sort of logical narrative. I'm not too fond of revisions either.
As for changing genres, I write poetry, academic essays, and contemporary romance. That's enough variety for me. I had an idea for a 500-word WWI-set Christmas story for the EJ/JQ board anthology. I thought I could write it in a few hours. At this point I have just under two hundred words and more than forty hours of research invested in it. I have twenty-five pages of notes for a two-page story. I'm insane! It would take me a decade to write a full historical. :(
Janga, hon, you're not supposed to wring the fun out of a 500 word piece. LOL! I need to think about that anthology. I've been so busy I forgot all about it. Next weel will be my catch up week.
I've only heard the name Fallon one time and it was a little girl that was in Kiddo's daycare years ago. It sounds better on an alpha hero. :)
I've had those dreams where you wake up feeling more tired than when you first laid down. I hate that. I haven't been sleeping well for several weeks, but it'll get better once I get some stuff off my plate. Which happens very soon. I'm looking forward to a peaceful, restful nights sleep.
Chance - That sounds so interesting. :) Apocalyptic stuff is so hot right now too...
Janga - I don't think I can write any way but linear. I always worry something will happen in my telling that would mess up thngs that haven't come or came already. I hated revisions so much that I can't imagine having something happen that would make me rewrite. *shudders*
And as far as the research goes, that was the part of writing historical that I had the most difficulty with. I am actually more interested in the social aspects than the historical aspects. Research drove me crazy. Making sure word choices were appropriate = crazy. Making sure things were invented in the time I wanted to use them = crazy. That is something I won't mind giving up.
Marn - I was just going to email and ask if you were going to write about a couple secondary characters. Guess I won't now! LOL.
I love beginnings and new characters. Mine usually come from something I hear. I was half listening to the news a few weeks ago, and they were talking about a female pilot in a plane crash. And bam - there's this character in my head named Kate who purposely crashes a plane. Why? No idea. But I already love her. She's uber tough. And one night we were watching some show about witness protection, and I thought, what would happen if you were some average person who had to change their identity without any help? What in the world would you do? And suddenly there's Molly in my head, on the run with a baby.
Hellion - I love the movie in your head thing, when characters just start doing their thing and all you have to do is sit back and watch. Now if I could only capture it on paper as well as it happens in my head....
Hal - the original plan was to write Maggie/Jon's and Beth's stories. I probably will still, just not right now.
I already knew about Kate and I think that sounds like an awesome story. And Molly running with her baby, that's awesome too....
Ah, fresh ideas. So exciting.
Marnee, I've got the opposite problem. I've got so many ideas I can't settle on one. I think I'm just procrastinating. What happens is that a scene comes to me, but it doesn't fit with the characters I'm working on now so I give the scene to different characters and on it goes!!!
It's quite funny really, but plotting and idea gathering has been my way of putting myself to sleep for years. When I can't fall off right away I tell myself a story. What I really should be doing is pulling out a pen and paper and writing them down but that would just wake me up! LOL I guess I've been craving sleep more than seeing my ideas on paper.
Irish - I started that way. Telling myself bedtime stories! LOL! It's a great way to slip into sleep. Then the dreams take over. Only problem was getting too involved in the story and not being able to get to sleep. ;)
2nd - that is so funny that you say that cause it's happening more and more. LOL I start weaving my story and it has the opposite effect - I can't turn my brain off!
That's why you start writing it down. Takes it out of the head and easier to fall asleep. Though...not always. I still spin myself up too much now and then...
Irish and 2nd - I tell myself stories to fall asleep too. It helps me relax as well. Most of the time I use it as a way to work through my plotting issues. If I don't know what's going to happen, I sleep on it. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. But it usually works.
:)
So, Hellion, you know what kind of trouble I have with Loki. You should hear some of our conversations.
Renee
Nice, finally found the article, looked for this all over the site
Post a Comment