Process: In the beginning…
Originally posted at http://katen.livejournal.com.
Luck for Hire
Last week (okay, maybe Saturday) Eric floated a new idea. We talked about it again this morning. At this point, it seems that it will be urban fantasy. The idea behind this novel is tasty to me, but will take some doing to pull off. I am cautiously excited. These are my very first words “on paper” about this project. It is also the first project that was titled before it was written (the validity of this statement may be in question).
…
At the end of March, my attitude toward writing was fairly grim. Eric and I had a pretty long conversation about the “work” aspect of writing and what motivates me to do this instead of some other job. When the work isn’t fun, it comes down to moments when the pieces click together and seeing that what I’ve/we’ve made is greater than its parts. (And I realize today that when that happens in bigger projects its much more satisfying than when it happens in 500 words of flash fiction.)
In April I had a dream while napping. I was sitting in a bar with Eric Reif (I think my dreaming brain munges Erics) and he asked me what I’d rather be writing since I was unhappy. “Horror,” I said. On waking, I decided to do what I wanted in short pieces. Since then I’ve written very little horror, but quite a bit of humor. Apparently, my dreaming brain is also hard of hearing.
In May, Josie of safetycomfort posted about magnetic attraction analysis, which involved making a list of thing that I find particularly intriguing. Eric pointed out that those concepts (esp. something seeming like something else) are pretty obvious when looking at my flash pieces and every longer fiction project up to Zeta Iota. I hadn’t quite found those aspects in Zeta Iota, though they are there. I see them now. What makes Luck for Hire “tasty” to me is that is falls smack dab in the middle of those interests.
If I want to view the sloth of the past three months in a way that is favorable to me, I could say that it’s been a journey of becoming more self aware and that time has allowed other ideas to come to fruition. More to the truth, I’ve probably been waiting for the newest, bestest project to come along.
