Lane Robins (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} lanerobins) wrote,@ 2009-03-11 11:19:00 |
|
Beasts.
The draft of the pet project is done. 100,000 words of modern knights, mayhem and romance: the Noble Beasts. It's ugly--the last quarter was written at speed, more sketched than illustrated. It's incoherent--plot threads snarl, snap, and start out of nowhere. It's a blank 'verse--the world-building comes and goes, mostly goes. But it's done. And my big thing, the main character's emotional arc, is solid and there. So I'm content.
I'm also a little at a loss.
This has been a pet project for multiples of years. I sketched the first character outlines over the holidays in 2005. Committed the first chapters (which all need to be cut or drastically reworked) to paper in the summer of 2006. It's been a good friend, the go to pleasure writing when every thing else got to be a little too much like work. And now it's done, and I'm not ready for it to be done. For one thing, I have to decide: revise, try to turn it into something worth selling? Or accept that I've made something utterly fun, probably unmarketable, and just set it aside? But mostly, I have to find a new pet project. Something long-running. Something that won't suffer too much from being set aside time and time again. Something that is always coaxing me to pick it up. Oh, and something with a high proportion of slushy romance. Just 'cause. My first instinct is the happy spaceopera with psychics that I've dabbled my toes into, expanding on the character of Fairman Greg deWildt, last seen roaming around in the Phobos anthology All The Rage This Year. I like Greg, like him enormously, and oh, does he have a traumatic history. . . . But in a lot of ways the Fairmen world is only a sidestep away from the Beasts, and I have this thing about always moving forward.
3 years there's been a tiny voice agitating in my brain, working away on the Beasts, a familiar murmur. And now it's quiet. Weird. Sometimes finishing a book is a little like a loss. Something you've given away. Best to fill that hole again.
So far the likely candidates are:
More Beasts, write a second book, using a different POV character. Lethal, blonde, petite. With a secret.
Psychic space cops! Really, crime & romance with telepathy, what's not to like? Did I mention alien lovers?
A chick-lit thing about an accidental arsonist and the fire fighter who loves her. (Do I even know HOW to write chicklit? No. Would it turn into a story about a pyrokinetic who burns things down? Most likely. Would it be interesting/fun? Maybe/maybe not but it'd be something different for me to try.)
In the meantime, there are work things to do. 3 stories so I can attend the CSSF workshop in June. The revisions for Sylvie 2. The new actual book; political mayhem and enemies in love. There's a whole world I've barely started thinking about there. It's not like I won't be busy. But life is just more fun with a pet project to fall back on.
Just finished reading: The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. Eyeing my bookshelf warily for the next selection.
The draft of the pet project is done. 100,000 words of modern knights, mayhem and romance: the Noble Beasts. It's ugly--the last quarter was written at speed, more sketched than illustrated. It's incoherent--plot threads snarl, snap, and start out of nowhere. It's a blank 'verse--the world-building comes and goes, mostly goes. But it's done. And my big thing, the main character's emotional arc, is solid and there. So I'm content.
I'm also a little at a loss.
This has been a pet project for multiples of years. I sketched the first character outlines over the holidays in 2005. Committed the first chapters (which all need to be cut or drastically reworked) to paper in the summer of 2006. It's been a good friend, the go to pleasure writing when every thing else got to be a little too much like work. And now it's done, and I'm not ready for it to be done. For one thing, I have to decide: revise, try to turn it into something worth selling? Or accept that I've made something utterly fun, probably unmarketable, and just set it aside? But mostly, I have to find a new pet project. Something long-running. Something that won't suffer too much from being set aside time and time again. Something that is always coaxing me to pick it up. Oh, and something with a high proportion of slushy romance. Just 'cause. My first instinct is the happy spaceopera with psychics that I've dabbled my toes into, expanding on the character of Fairman Greg deWildt, last seen roaming around in the Phobos anthology All The Rage This Year. I like Greg, like him enormously, and oh, does he have a traumatic history. . . . But in a lot of ways the Fairmen world is only a sidestep away from the Beasts, and I have this thing about always moving forward.
3 years there's been a tiny voice agitating in my brain, working away on the Beasts, a familiar murmur. And now it's quiet. Weird. Sometimes finishing a book is a little like a loss. Something you've given away. Best to fill that hole again.
So far the likely candidates are:
More Beasts, write a second book, using a different POV character. Lethal, blonde, petite. With a secret.
Psychic space cops! Really, crime & romance with telepathy, what's not to like? Did I mention alien lovers?
A chick-lit thing about an accidental arsonist and the fire fighter who loves her. (Do I even know HOW to write chicklit? No. Would it turn into a story about a pyrokinetic who burns things down? Most likely. Would it be interesting/fun? Maybe/maybe not but it'd be something different for me to try.)
In the meantime, there are work things to do. 3 stories so I can attend the CSSF workshop in June. The revisions for Sylvie 2. The new actual book; political mayhem and enemies in love. There's a whole world I've barely started thinking about there. It's not like I won't be busy. But life is just more fun with a pet project to fall back on.
Just finished reading: The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. Eyeing my bookshelf warily for the next selection.
