So, I’ve been quiet lately, namely on account of taking some time to do some editing and recharge the mental batteries after finishing the last novel draft. The novel is still, in my opinion, crap, which means it’s too soon to turn my gaze back at it. Before I dive into something fresh, I thought I’d take a week or four to recharge the mental batteries. To that end, a lot of my free time lately has been working on my stamp collection, a topic for another post.
One of the things I find myself wondering about as I recharge is where my next story will be manifest itself. My last two novel-length exercises have been an urban fantasy (with slight horror elements), and Big Dumb Object in a fantasy setting. I doubt I was the first to attempt the latter, but it felt fresh to me (at least compared to the even more common fantasy tropes, and its not the same as the quest object, like rings and swords, I swear), and it was a fun exercise. I’ve toyed with the next novel length project as a science fiction story, but I’m still somewhat wedded to the notion of the “all in one book” approach, and all of my space opera notions are volume spanning epics.
That brings me around to an interesting notion and the topic for this post. The epitomous “they” say you should write what you know, by which I’ve learned to interpret as write what you feel the most comfortable writing. The urban fantasy novel (and its sister volume that lies mostly finished) have so far been the easiest words to flow from brain to fingers. The fantasy novel made it its way out eventually, but felt forced in parts, and that’s never a feeling you want to have hanging around your own work. I think the hardest part with this is I don’t even like reading urban fantasy, at least not these days – not since the 90’s anyway.
The crux of the problem is that I know I am forcing myself to write certain genres and ignoring the fact that it should be fun. Maybe this is why some writers don’t read in the genres they write in – writing outside the familiar, we’re less likely to fall into all of the same traps that familiarity breeds. I can feel my batteries brimming with charge, ready to be directed. Now to figure out what direction the compass points in.
Related articles
- A-Z of fantasy: I is for Imagination (ellenvgregory.com)
- On writing the latest draft (datanode.net)
