Friday Rants and Raves - April 25

[sarillia]

Happy Friday everyone! I haven't done this in a while but we're back. Hopefully you all have lots of good things to talk about , but I want to hear about the bad stuff too if you need someone to commiserate with. How has your writing life been lately?

Continuing with my ongoing presentation of the pictures in my "inspiration" collection, today we have James Skelton Smith's Courting the Moon.

Comments

[inkdust]

Ugh, things are going terribly.

The next story idea I had picked just doesn't make me care enough, so I started questioning whether I should return to my back-burner massive trilogy idea, but the reason why I set it aside in the first place (aka being incredibly overwhelming) is still true, so I haven't made any progress there either. I realized I've never actually been in this situation before, and that in the past whenever I've started on a new story it's been a "it chose me" kind of deal. Here I'm trying to move on simply because I need to start on the next thing, and it's a struggle.

I've decided to try being gentle for a while and see if that gets me anywhere better, but it's hard to fight the feeling that I'm not accomplishing anything / should be trying harder / blah blah do better. There's no one to tell me whether I'm doing things right or doing enough, but I still feel everyone's eyes on my back.

Basically I'm flailing through a new kind of transition with little sense of direction and a lot of negative feelings.

[sarillia]

What are you waiting for before starting the trilogy idea? Is there some point when it will become less overwhelming? I would think that you just have to bite the bullet and start writing. Or am I missing something and being self-centered here? Because I would definitely go with that one if I was in your situation.

I might also rework the other idea so that it's more compelling to me. Could you do that?

I hope you figure out something that works for you.

[inkdust]

One of those two options is probably what will end up happening, I just don't know which. The trilogy is a little complicated, and by complicated I really mean carries a lot of baggage, because I've been working on some form of it since 2005, and I used it for my undergrad honors thesis, but it's evolved basically into a vague premise with deeply developed characters, where the actual plot for the next incarnation of the story is very up in the air but at the same time sort of weighed down by all the previous incarnations. What really trips me up is the worldbuilding, planning and broader plot, because I'm going for a sort of alternate-history-earth, with political upheaval and takeover and refugees going into hiding and other things I really don't have a handle on but I want to be very plausible compared to current society. So I feel very constrained by realism, and very ignorant of what I'm trying to make realistic, and research is exhausting. I know the best thing to do is to just start writing some of it, but any scene I have in mind is framed by the characters' sociopolitical circumstances, so I can barely get anything down before I hit something I don't know yet, and the noise starts building up in my head of everything I have to figure out.

I know what I really want to do is write that one, but when I started working on my last project I would get an idea for the trilogy once in a while and file it away, and I began to think that I might be able to just keep compiling those bits and pieces as I worked on other projects until I built up a better understanding of the story and thereby chipped away at the sense of doom I feel when I try to look at the whole thing at once. That may or may not be true, but right now I don't feel any closer to getting my head around things than I did the last time I was trying to work on it, when I decided I should set it aside for my own mental health and pursue the new idea that was pulling on me.

Sorry, that's quite a rant (though rant is in the title of the post, right? :) but that's the state of my brain at the moment. I know I'll figure out something eventually. Eventually just needs to be soon.

[sarillia]

Ah okay, I can understand that. I get that way with historical fiction because I start worrying about all the little things I could get wrong just because I don't know everything that I don't know so how do I know to research some things that I would never think of?

Maybe it would be best to do what you've been doing and collect those bits and pieces on the side. You could take the research one bit at a time as well as the character and world and plot stuff.

On the other hand it might be better to face it head on since that baggage you were talking about from working on it so long might just increase as time goes on. I don't know.

If you ever want to bounce ideas off someone you can PM me or find me on Skype.

[inkdust]

Thanks. Yeah, it's a similar situation to historical stuff. No wonder everyone used to say "write what you know," lol. I'd much rather be able to make everything up. But we'll see what happens, and I'll keep you updated. How are your stories going?

[sarillia]

I'm being really lazy. It's not even a writer's block problem or anything. I've learned to tell the difference between a problem that means I need to step back and look at what I'm doing and sheer laziness, and this is the latter.

I've made some progress on my Little Mermaid story though.

[inkdust]

I know what you mean. Lazy is an annoying beast. But that's good about the Mermaid!

[splinteredstar]

Hmm. I've done some study in sociology and I know we have some History people here - if you want to pm me the specifics, maybe I can point you in the right direction?

[inkdust]

Some outside input might help, that would be great. I'll PM you this weekend or maybe Monday and describe what I've been thinking. Thanks for the offer!