With this new rewrite, I choose to cut the first chapter short, dedicating only a single scene to it, whereas before it had three, largely disconnected scenes, which made it quite long. That, alongside with me wanting to stick with three cycling Point-of-View characters, made the second chapter a bit trick to write on. But as I cut the first chapter down to a third, the second chapter can easily be following scene but from the next PoV.

I also wasn’t happy with the first chapter, it felt, out of place in this new perspective of the setting. But it is a scene that I really do have to keep, it is, after all, what originate the whole story to begin with.

Then it struck me, I can do it, from the second character PoV. Completely changing who starts the story. And it fits. There is also a massive plus to it, I can use this one scene to write something I often struggle to write into the story: a male character wearing a skirt. I.e.: crossdressing.

I seldom ever describe the characters appearances and choice of wardrobe. I don’t have to give them features that are not needed, only a few details, wrinkled, chiselled, etc; leaving most to the readers imagination. But in this rewrite, I had the PoV character looking up, “past her skirt and stern face, beyond the clouds and the reach of the city’s light, into the blackness of the night sky above.”

By changing the PoV character, I will also change the second character in this scene, and now it has become “past his skirt …”.

The downside of it, I just threw out everything I ever written before. This is not a minor change, this is major.

#Writing #WritingCommunity #Crossdress

I’ve allowed myself to completely rest during the month of December. I was quite worn out from NaNo, and besides wanting to recover my energies, I wanted my mind to wander freely for a while, to allow myself to think of something new that I could write, and my mind was still to set on the same story I attempted three times during NaNo.

But December ended and January started, and I haven’t touched the keyboard (to write) or a notebook for a week. Yes, the new year started just like the old.

So yesterday I picked up one of the empty notebooks I have, and a pencil, and I started writing. I can’t remember, for the life of me, when was the last time I used a pencil for writing. I definably used for drawing time and again, but for writing, I don’t know, maybe since high school? Half a lifetime ago or close enough to not matter?

And yes, with a pencil, I also picked up an eraser. Going quite on the opposite hand of how I have been writing for a long time now: focus on writing, leaving editing for later. So any time I misspell a word, think of a better one, I do stop writing, erase my mistake and then I keep going. Even whole sentences suffer its might. But if the target of the eraser wrath is more than a couple of words, I chose to just make a mark at the beginning and end of the ‘deleted’ part, a line works fine.

One shall be forgiven to think that stopping to erase small mistakes would be detrimental to the writing, but I’m finding it has quite the opposite effect, it improves. And I know why.

For the same reason I find writing with a nib/dip pen so rewarding. With a nib pen, I’m forced to constantly stop, every so often. I can write just so many words before the ink runs dry, and those few seconds I’m not writing, are enough for my mind to wander a little ahead, to look back on what I wrote and decide for better words to follow.

It is the same thing really, every time I stop to correct some mistake, every time I put the pencil aside, pick up the eraser and do the opposite of writing, I’m thinking of what I’ll be writing next, and as a whole, the product feels better. Plus is a rest to the fingers. Nib pen you just hold and slide over the paper, ordinary pens and pencil, you do need to put some pressure on it, however little it is.

Now, for what I ended choosing to write, here is the other funny thing, I’m restarting the very same project I attempted three times already. But this time I’m going with a very different perspective on the things. Gone is the oppressive Cyberpunk-ish feel of the original idea.

The towering skyscrapers blocking the setting sun no longer feel like the bars of a prison with no doors out. But like the trees of a magical forest that burst to life with colourful lights once the sun sets and the night takes over.

I don’t know how far I’ll get, if anything, this new perspective on the setting makes it much harder to make the original plot work. But who knows what the one can find in an enchanted forest, maybe treasures, maybe nothing but an adventure, and that would be a great finding indeed.

#Writing #WritingCommunity

It is not that I do not have any ideas or even material to work with, I have, a lot, and that is The problem: there is just too much I want to do, meaning I will spend hours staring at the ceiling and doing nothing. This has been the case for quite a while now, but I cannot keep going like this.

One thing I posted when I trully gave up on this year’s NaNo, was that I was trying to tell I story for which I’m just not good enough to tell, and the biggest revelation was I wouldn’t ever be good enough, if I did not write. I can’t complain my craft is subpar if I do not hone my skills. And though I’m saying it was a revelation, it really wasn’t, it is something I know for quite some time, I just did not want to accept it.

Of concretes works, i.e.: stuff I have a pretty good idea how the world operates, I have:

1. This year’s NaNo: a kind of sci-fi-ish story some twenty minutes in the future. I cannot simply continue it, as there is a major event which should have happened earlier in the story, and though most of the three Point-of-View characters are mostly disconnected, this even will have repercussion in two characters. One thing I can do from this point forward, is to go through what I wrote and take notes of what is happening but also preparing for the changes needed, in order to re-write the whole thing at a later date.

2. Another project is a previous NaNo, the only one I have actually finished the draft, maybe four years ago? Can’t remember. And by draft I mean the outline. Beucase this is what us pantsers are, really hardcore planers. Currently, the draft, has three parts with three chapters each, meaning it will have at least twenty-seven chapter if I ever get to rewrite it. On this project I already have a number of notes and changes that need to be made and events that stay as they are. Ah, fun-fact: this is one of the few stories I’m set on a title, with a subtitle; the subtitle being Prologue. Yes, the whole 50k+ words outline started as a prologue for another story. (I’m telling you pantsers are just very detailed planners.)

3. The third project I could tackle, that has something concrete on it, well, it is not that finished. I have a title (another of the exceptions), and a good deal of the world is set, but I stopped writing at some point for reasons I fail to remember and never returned to it. If I were to work on this, I would just continue the outline- I mean, continue with the 1st draft.

Aside from the aforementioned, there are the following stories:

1. Space Fantasy: I’m thinking on golden age of piracy. Definietly not scifi, I won’t even bother to make tech seem believeable, let alont explain it. Basicaly humanity is in some sort of exodus, but it is not humanity from our planet Earth. It is not twenty minutes in the future. It is something else entirely.

2. Steam Punk: I’m thinking a bit of grit and treasure hunt. And just as above, the setting is its own, it is not Victorian or Edwardian era (I think it is the later). It does not happen in an alternative past, nor in alternative future of the past, nor even in an alternative earth.

3. Seven Samurai meets Dungeon & Dragons meets The Witcher: You can imagine the story, it has been told already, I just can never settle between actual D&D races or my own.

There are a few other world concepts, but I will not even try to detail them as, different from everything above, these other ideas of mine are still very fluid.

And let us not forget that I also enjoy cartography and programming. Heck, I already started looking into developing a web app to serve as the main landing page for my domain (it is just some crap placeholder at the moment).

Regardless of what is comming next, my initial plans is to work on one chapter per month and post it online. I’ll probably use a separate blog for that. I know one chapter per month is really nothing, but I also know I won’t keep the schedule of one chapter per week. I do have a deadline to make this decision, and chances are, when it comes to it, I will do something else entirely.

#WritingCommunity #Writing #Future #Plans #NaNoWriMo #Fantasy #SciFi #ScienceFiction #SteamPunk