Thanks to everyone who asked where I was. Nothing dire happened! But my mother left on Tuesday and I have guests tonight, so the majority of my Spring cleaning got condensed into a couple of days. (Yes, I know Spring is 2 months old, but I have been sick. And busy.)
I love Spring cleaning. It’s cathartic; decluttering, airing, dusting, evicting all the spiders from their winter residences. Go, you! Set up house in the garden. And while you’re there, see if you can make a dent in the snail population…I promise, they’re tasty. With a little garlic. Or so I’ve heard.
The great thing about cleaning (apart from being clean) is that it gives the brain ample time to think. So I have been mulling over where I want to go next with my writing. I have a number of potential projects, but none of them were screaming to be written; they all needed brain time.
Well they got plenty of brain time. I’ve decided to put the shapeshifter romance away for now. The modern fantasy also got shelved. The half-finished fantasy novel that I planned to cut and rewrite as a YA has been put away, never to see the light of day. There’s just not enough there that’s different and fresh, though I will be stealing a few interesting characters for later projects.
When I was tidying all of these projects up, I found 17k words of a political SF that I started in, oh, 2002 I think. I read it through, and oh dear god it was bad. But it rumbled about in my head and I found that I couldn’t leave it alone. Things kept popping up to disturb me. Body parts. A domed city of perpetual night. A female detective facing off with an assassin. Suicide that becomes art. It was a big concept piece that I was in no way ready for at the time. I’m not sure that I’m ready for it now. But it’s talking to me, and I feel that I need to explore, to ask questions, to find out what’s going on.
Because I don’t know. There were no notes with the draft; no idea of where I had planned to take it. Which is fantastic. Because I have these big set piece moments all ready to go, and I have all the fun of finding out how they fit together.
So the plans for November have changed. I’m not doing NaNo, but I will be embarking on a new first draft, assuming I can figure out what’s going on in the next 8 days.
How about you? Are you NaNo-ing? If not, are you writing? What are you working on?
Oh, and P.S: I’ll be doing the whole thing in Liquid Story Binder. It’s about time I actually tested it fully. I’m a bit apprehensive to be honest, as I’m finding myself quite badly blocked lately when I sit at the computer to write. But I will persevere, and see if I can get some sort of usage guide out there for people who aren’t sure whether it’s worth the cash. Stay tuned!