Category: Writing Update

When is it cliche and when is it classic?

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Update

Its been some times since I wrote anything regarding what I’ve been working on so I thought it should be time for an update. The New Year has come and gone and I’ve had tons of things to do, but one project I have not taken my hands off of is the notion of writing a novel. I have had the idea for a massive project, a fantasy novel, for some time and now I’m getting into it finally. The trouble is this…

I’m not sure the concept is any good.

I read a website recently that asked you questions regarding your concept for a novel. It said that due to the volume of cliche material being produced, if you fall into any of the categories listed in the survey, you should abandon your novel at once because you’re relying on cliches. While I think that is harsh, and while I don’t believe everything I read on the internet, the concept has occurred to me that perhaps I am relying on cliches. Yet one of the major things I’ve been looking at with this book is following the hero’s journey as laid out in “The Hero With A Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell. That is to say, I’m looking to write something that plays with epic story, heroic struggles, and a fantasy world. Some of the characters, however, do seem to be running along cliche lines and need to be revitalized but the question still stands: when it is a mythic journey? When did we begin to say ‘this has been done, so you shouldn’t do it again’? The fact is, everything has been done in one way or another a thousand times before. So who in the world says that it’s bad provided its got a fresh direction?

Regardless of how little one should pay attention to a lot of things you read on the internet (bloggers, I’m sorry to say its true, the internet is a place full of fun people and then there are the ones who are just wackyland), this does bring up some issues I need to consider about my character development in this book. Especially for the main character. It makes me want to bang my head against the wall. Yet I especially want to write to the arrogant pricks who wrote this website and ask where they get off telling anyone to ‘abandon their writing’ should it fall into cliches. How about work on making it better? Improve it? Evolve?

Some people don’t know what improvement looks like if it jumped up and bit them in the ass. Some people only want to be naysayers. And what was it a subway poster said recently? Naysayers don’t do much except shake their heads and say nay, what do they accomplish if anything? In the terms of the hero’s journey, they would be considered the archtype of the Threshold Guardian, holding back the hero of the story from the next level of the adventure unless a solution or resolution can be reached. The Threshold Guardian is our proud little naysayer. Well I don’t say nay. I say I work smarter and harder to make my characters better.

Hrm, seems I worked out the answer to my question. In the end, it doesn’t matter if someone says ‘abandon hope, all ye who enter here’. It just motivates me to improve things. In the end, it might not be the best thing I ever write… but it will get done.

The NaNo Madness Has Begun!

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Update

So naNoWrMo began four days ago and already I’m off to a running start. I’m bleary eyed and tired but I’m off to an incredible rate. I’ve already buried 15,000 words out of 50,000 and it’s only day 4. My justification is that I want to strike while the anvil is hot but the truth of the matter is, I always write in bursts like this, be it for short stories or for larger works. I work while things are inside my head and then I can get into long stretches when I’m not in the least bit interested in looking at a blank Word document for anything. You can’t get me to write when I’m not in the mood for anything in this world. So for that reason, I’m on a bit of a jag with this one.

This isn’t new with writers. A lot of writers get on these long writing jags that can last for as long as the muse wants to make you her bitch. I, for one, will not complain. I started to hit a bit of a bump in the jag road this evening when I was trying to write one part of the story but I managed to punch through it. If I go too long without writing this, I’m afraid it’s going to go back into the recesses of my brain wherever it comes from and I’m going to lose it. Twenty four pages down, however many left to go.

The name of the story is “A Walk in the Dark” and I can’t decide if that’s dorky or not. The story centers on a character from one of the previous NaNo’s that I wrote who gets visited by the angel of death and the two go for a walk to talk about some stuff, including the end of the world. I’m too edgy about getting this work done to talk more about it but needless to say its going to deal with a lot of the things I wrote in the other two installments of the NaNo story which has become a three year saga to complete and will deal with some new stuff including more spiritual discourse and things like that. This one is going to be more cerebral, less action, which I think I like. I don’t know why but I have a good feeling about this one, I really do.

More later. Now I have to sleep.

The Writing Project Load

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Update

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.

Approaching: NaNoWriMo 2008

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Testimonial, Writing Update

Two years back I took on the challenge of doing a National Novel Writing Month. That meant attempting, in one month, to write 50,000 words of a novel and getting it knocked out by the deadline. In 2006 I did it with three days to spare, if I remember correctly. In 2007, I did it with two hours to spare, punching out 12,000 words or so of it in one sitting and driving myself to the point of delirium so I didn’t miss the deadline. This year, November’s coming up really quickly and I am literally petrified at the notion of doing this again.

This year is different than last year. Where last year, taking on NaNo was difficult because I had just taken on a new job to which I was just acclimating, this year I have even more work. I am going to school, working, worrying about my future potentially in the police department, and trying to find time to run a full-scale live-action roleplay game and write in my spare time. Call me crazy but that’s a damn full schedule. Oh yes, and I’d like to sleep, eat, and maybe see my friends in between. It hasn’t been a fun ride so far since the semester started and now… NaNo.

I’m by far sure I’m insane for even considering this malarky; adding a deadline of 50,000 words by the end of November to my already hectic work week is not something I’m sure I’m ready for. Yet there is a tradition for me to uphold and frankly, it might drive me to get in more work. So I’m going to give it the old college try. To me, it’s worth kicking in some extra work to make myself meet the deadline. It’s good practice for forcing myself to sit down and write. 

Now if only I knew what the hell I was going to write about this year…

Workshop submission sent, now begins the nail-biting

by Shoshana, posted in Workshop update, Writing Update

I’ve done workshops before in college, in writing groups. This time, however, something seems to be different. The class I’m taking is called the Advanced Writing Seminar, and its the most dedicated writing students who are willing to brave a late-night class to work throughout the semester to better their writing. Perhaps that’s why I’m so nervous? I submitted a short story set in a super-hero setting and for the very first time, my stomach was twisting. I was pretty sure that I had created an absolute piece of dreck.

Now, I know that those who know me are going to say “but how is this any different from you always freak out about your work?” The truth is, I really do tend to… freak about my writing. I don’t have much by way of confidence in it, deep down, and so I fidget and freak and worry and bite my nails. That’s normal. I find it part of the process that allows me not to get too big-headed about writing. This time I didn’t transition from the nervous stage into anything else. This story just sat there like a dead cat, as if to say “You got close, but no cigar, buddy.” 

Sigh. Maybe I’m freaking over nothing and maybe I can’t accept that not everything is going to be perfect on the first try. I gotta get used to smacking at something with the literary hammer until I get to the place where the story is perfect. This one is not perfect by far, but maybe that’s a good thing to. I can attend a class and be nervous once in a while. I can be worried. It’s not against the law.

The story’s called “No Hero” and it’s about three girls who work at a convenience store in a world where superheroes run rampant. Many of the heroes in the story are homages to the LARP I ran recently called Heirs of Prometheus, with mentions to other people’s characters, just as sort of an in-joke for me and my friends. Of the three girls, two are obsessed with superheroes while the other one is disdainful of the whole superhero craze and culture and the story follows what develops between the three of them one night at work. Its really, in the long run, about what makes a hero. The main character, Karen Unger, was a non-player character creation of mine for the LARP as well and I always had a fascination with her. Her whole story seemed to live in my head, as did a couple of other of those NPC’s. I’m glad I still have them in my head. More fodder for stories later.

I don’t get workshopped for two weeks. Plenty of time for me to bite off my nails in worry.

Writing Update!

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Update

As of today, I have turned out one short story last night, entitled “Songs in the Dark”, which is a short story based on one of the larger projects I’m working on.

Pages = 9

Time it took to write = two hours

I’ve also been banging out the start of a new urban fantasy story based on an old roleplaying character that I really liked. That’s already on twelve pages in a few days of work, though for some reason I’m hitting some issues getting down the voice of this character… which is strange, because back in the day when I roleplayed her, I could go for days playing the character in an online text game, writing in the first person. It’s very strange, but I’m hoping the work I’m doing will get better. 

Anyway, just time for a quick update. Must get back to work.