Creator of History
Another week where I’m posting late. To be honest, I wouldn’t be posting at all if I weren’t procrastinating.
Last weekend I put the finishing touches on my first two chapters and fired them off to the writer’s group. Of course, once I’d done that I found several glaring errors I wish I had caught. It was the same way with my college papers. So, in a week and a half I will sit quietly and with the appearance of calm, while inside I am a quivering pile of fear at the feedback my fellow writers will give me. Yet, I am also excited to hear what works. Perhaps it will be well received? Who knows!
The current chapter has been a real struggle for me. Nothing has flowed. I’ve struggled to make progress. I spend as much time as I can, playing the chapter in my head like a movie, but there’s one downside to my new life here. I fall asleep quickly. Insomnia used to play an important role in story development. That means I now need to allocate more time for daydreaming. For this reason I spent $30 of my precious budgeted money on some resin adirondack chairs for my sun porch. Now I can sit out there and let my mind wander, and yesterday I discovered this is a pleasant way to spend an hour or two.
My struggles with the chapter had me doubting the entire book. It is a YA novel, which like so many others, has a boy wizard protagonist. Ho hum. Who cares? There are a gazillion of those out there, most of them poorly written. I know the other stories that have inspired some of my story. Is mine just derivative of theirs? Is there any point? Then again, there are really only 7 stories in the world. We’re all just retelling the same thing with different details.
In reworking the first few chapters, and strengthening the theme in those chapters I was reminded that my story has depth. The characters are good. The underlying themes are unique for the genre. The setting is an entirely new setting of my creation. I am a Creator of Worlds! So yes, there is a point. Yes, some people will surely care.
Last night the rest of the struggle with this chapter was finally revealed. The fact that this is an entirely new world, means I am woefully short of background material. Yes, fantasy is incredibly freeing because there’s nothing to really research. You, the writer, make it all up. But that’s just really a trap. The writer has to make it ALL up. Every last detail. I hint at events that have occurred during their history, but I don’t even know what I’m hinting at. I haven’t created some of the in-depth history that needs to be created. Foolish! Of course it’s difficult to write a scene set in a museum when I don’t even know what history that museum is displaying.
So today I have my work set before me. I need to write a few things that I landed on yesterday, and then I need to spend a few more hours in my adirondack chair, dreaming up history.
And now, I guess I have run the course of my procrastination attempt. Though it is lunch time, so there’s that.
by
I shouldn’t find it odd anymore, the parallels, but I do. For the last 6 months or so, I have been working on an idea for an epic fantasy story. I met with a friend a couple of months ago so I could hear myself talk about “It’s all been done” to see if anything broke loose but nothing did. I ponder the story every once in a while and work on ideas for the world and characters every couple of weeks because the idea won’t go away but no real progress is being made.
Alan, we do seem to end up on the parallel tracks, don’t we. Try writing it out a bit and see what happens… unless it’s like my idea, the keep it to yourself! Ha! Keep mulling. The story will reveal itself eventually.