Sunday, January 3, 2010

New Project

With Galileo complete and on its way hopefully to be published, my attention has turned to my newest large project. For those of you unfamiliar with my writing structure, I work one large novel or novella and a few shorts/flashes at a time.

That is unless my little muse has drunk a virtual Red Bull, in which I'm sporadically spewing out loads of outlines, scenes, and idea blurbs. Most of these will be looked at by my muse later in shock and horror...then ceremoniously crumpled and tossed into the recycle bin.

But right now she's in a zen moment and really digging the next project in the queue. Damarion's Voyage is slated to be a novella with a goal word count of 35k-40k. Damarion started out life as three different stories.

Yes, I know what you're thinking, "What the Wisconsin?!"

I dreamed the main storyline and feverishly wrote it into a novella in two weeks. Then I sat back and realized it was emotionally void and one dimensional. Pissed off, I stuck in in my halted folder and moved on in disgust.

Then I dreamed this really wonderful floral planet and wrote a flash out of it. Or, I thought it was a flash. I even sent it to a magazine only to be told, "Um yeah. Nice visual of a world but no actual story included."

In the meantime, I had this older story in my back pocket (not really there, figuratively speaking) about a transcription of a found space voyage recording. The story is one of my favorite but missing all character dynamic.

So, all these pieces and each missing some main element or two. Busy thinking about Galileo on my way home one day (enter 1950s upbeat jingle here) and a car honked it horn...wait, I hate when people say it that way. The car does not honk its own horn. A person in a car honked their horn (there, much better). Any-who, the horn scared the jeepers out of me and for some reason I realized that the voyage story and the cardboard space journey were the same stories.

Don't ask me why, it must have been subconsciously floating right below the surface.

I hurried home and laid out both stories. The two seemed like a perfect mate to each other. I merged them into a generational storyline that bounces back and forth between father and daughter journeys.

After this first breakthrough I'd fiddled a bit and then realized one of the planets they visit (in their respect time) is this floral planet.

Who-ala, three stories into one. It's how my brain sometimes works, I don't know what else to say.

Well, good writing all!

2 comments:

  1. Yikes! I *think* I like your style...???

    I guess I could build a story out of the first nightmare I remember having.

    Hmm, an epiphany!

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  2. Heehee. I know, weird.

    You should try creating a story out of your nightmare. It's kind of fun and also helps you work out the meaning sometimes.

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