So a new part of this blog project is going to be writing up a little bit about what I’m writing right now. There isn’t much of a purpose in it, really, except to sort of check in every once in a while on projects that I’m going through and to keep my progress. It helps also to look at the sort of accomplishments I’m going through and getting them tallied for me to see. What I’m in the middle of right now is as follows:
- A longer novel about a young woman who goes to rescue a friend and gets into trouble with werewolves because of it, which I’ve written myself into a bit of a corner on and I’m waiting for the inspiration fairy to visit.
- A longer story about a character I wrote up for a roleplaying game when I was younger and couldn’t put down, which has so far stalled out due to lack of inspiration.
- A short story set in a world that I’m creating for a novel called “The Death of Scarling”, though the title is still sort of fluid. (This one is in editing stages, as the short story is done)
- A short story I completed for workshop called “No Hero” about an original super-hero concept in a world me and my friends recently used for a roleplaying game. (This one is all but finished, just needs the finishing touches from editing suggested in the workshop).
- The beginnings of a story about a girl, her relationship with her father, and his death in Israel.
It’s this last project that I started today and I’ve got already five pages on. Now I like it, it has some oomph, and could be finished right now if I was satisfied with it remaining a short story. There is something to the place where I stopped in it, right now, that could make it a short story about death and grieving, but I think there is more to it than that and I might want to explore it. I’m drawing a lot from my own visits to Israel years ago to sort of address some of the issues in it, and one of the important ones is the disconnect one can get from their religion while their family might be more connected than they are. I think that’s a fundamental and interesting concept to tackle and I’m not sure it would be addressed in the five pages I’ve already got. I think this could go a little further and I think its maybe the most normal thing that I’ve ever written.
One of the jokes people make about me is that I’m incapable of writing something that is completely normal. I have never really written a story that wasn’t about a supernatural thing or a spiritual thing or a horror thing or a ghost thing or whatever. I got dared to write a short story about two women having coffee and set it in a post-apocalyptic urban city. I tried to tell a story about some girls in college in a convenience store job and made one of them a superhero. I’m not good at normal. This story, about the girl in Israel, might actually be the one normal one. I haven’t decided. I think there might be something supernatural in there, or at least have some kind of magical realism to it, but I haven’t decided yet. There is something to leaving it just the way it is, dealing with important issues of family and religion and death and heritage, without dealing with something blatantly supernatural. I can’t decide yet but something about this story seems really different for me, very good. It feels, to sound like a kid for a second, like grown-up writing. The story has no name so far.
So the tally is really:
- “The Death of Scarling” – In editing with 6 pages total
- “No Hero” – In final editing with 10 pages total
- Untitled Werewolf Story – In progress with 27 pages in
- Untitled Roleplaying Character Story – In progress with 15 pages in
- Untitled Israel story – In progress with 5 pages in
That’s not all too bad for works in progress. I’ve had a lot more ideas for short stories since I started reading all of these anthologies so I’m focusing a lot on getting that refined too, so there should be more of those than anything else. I’m going to keep churning those out and see if that helps with the longer stories.
And all this, plus NaNo is coming up. Heh. I’m so doomed.