Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Dare to be silly.

I've just written a chapter that is so over the top sentimental and religious that it is totally out of character for me.

First of all, I'm not religious, so it was strange to write such a scene.  But the Character was a believer, a strong believer, and so I went into her head and wrote this outrageous scene that seems silly to me.

But it's what it is. I let myself write it.  I like it, but I don't know how it looks to others.

But does it matter how it looks to others, if this is what I think the book needs?  Been forcing myself to write the scenes.  They seem a little clunky to me, but move on.  Get it done.

Wrote 2600 words.  A couple of short chapters.

So I have two chapters left, which is only one less chapter than I started the week intending to write.  Like I said, I wrote a couple of extra small chapters, which were more or less about upping the danger stakes.

So now I feel like the final chapters can be written.

This next chapter is the emotional core of the book.  The final chapter is just like the final fireworks.
I have only a general idea of what I want to accomplish in both chapters.  Yesterday worked out OK, in that I forced myself to write the chapters despite not really knowing where I was going -- besides having a general idea.  Usually, I like to have the whole chapter in my head before I write it.  But I waited two weeks for the chapter to form and it never did, so I winged it.

Lots of rewriting ahead of me on Wolflander and Ghostlander -- going along with the huge rewrites of Faerylander I have to wonder what it is about these books that require so much rewriting.  I think maybe because so much of it is totally made up and imaginary.  My Faery is a completely new world, with its own rules, and it if very hard to make that work.

Maybe a lesson there.  Either think out all the rules in advance, or write material that doesn't require so many rules.  Writing my historical horror books, for instance, I'm constrained by historical reality.  Which somehow makes it easier.

Same thing with the Vampire Evolution books, which were constrained by the reality of the modern world.  Strange to say about books about werewolves and bigfoots and vampires, but they are meant to be set in the real world.

Whereas the Lander books have much more of a made-up quality to them. (Even though technically they are set in the real world they have always seemed more imaginary to me.)  

Next time I write a new book that isn't connected to any of the current series, I'm going to set myself the task of writing a straight-forward book, with no side trips, no flashbacks, something simple. 

That's hard to do.

No comments: