Nothing in Particular

I just watched the 2012 movie Upside Down, and it made me think of one of my stories from a few years ago, The Shattered World, in that it involves worlds that are strangely connected and dubious science. Definitely what I would call fantasy and not science fiction. Maybe I should revive that story and give it another chance. Maybe for Camo NaNo in July. Or maybe I’ll do something new. I don't know.

What would you like to see, all five of my readers? What kind of challenge would you like to see me tackle? I have a few things up in the air at the moment, in various states of completion, but I'm not above shelving them and starting something new.

I would have written this post hours ago, but I got distracted reading a story that proved to be much longer than expected. I literally spent hours on it, even as it got later and later, because I really wanted to know how it all turned out. It was a very dark and bleak story, but my god, was it good.

I want to write something like that.

I have all these ideas. And then I wrote all these first drafts. And they never seem to live up to what I wanted. They're never as good as the initial idea. They're always lacking… something. It might be that I'm not a very good writer. I accept that. I just wish I could pin down what exactly I'm not doing well, so I could work on it. Maybe it's a lot of things. Maybe it's my lack of evocative descriptions. Or any descriptions, for that matter. Maybe it's a limited vocabulary. I know all kinds of words that I never really use. I know what they mean when I see them, but they never come to mind when I need a word. Maybe my characters are falling flat because I haven't built up all those details I never see a point in.

I think that's the core of it. There are these things, like detailed descriptions and full character profiles, that I can't see the value of in the moment. Sure, they would contribute to the overall finished product, but as building blocks, they seem pointless. My castle is crumbling because it's got a shitty foundation. I need to work on these things, but… ugh. It's like exercise. You want the results, but you don't want to put in the effort.

I heard somewhere (I think it might have been John Green, but I could be lying about that), "I didn't want to write a novel, I wanted to have written a novel." Or something to that effect. Skipping to the end to enjoy the results without having to actually put in the work. And my god, do I want to have written a novel. But writing is hard. Especially when you're not particularly good and you don't have a lot of time to spare.

But you can't have written a novel without first writing a novel, so damn it, I guess I'll have to do it the hard way.

I'll see you next week, for more rambling about nothing in particular.