When They Insist on Doing Their Own Thing…

I’m talking characters, of course.

I’ve started picking up the writing a little more now that I can focus (and sit longer!). The first chapter of ShadowWeaver is done…horribly rough, but done. And honestly, what is the deal? The chapter started out a little serious and then shot straight down road to smutsville – I pulled Abby and Ion back out of it, and by the end they were in bed with each other anyway. *eyeroll* Seriously. Well, hopefully they’ve gotten it out of their systems now and I can focus on something resembling a plot. Damn panster.

I’m still feeling a tad plotless, but I’ve started Chapter 2 anyway.  Have to see where it leads me. When I wrote Shadow of the Incubus, I skipped around a lot – wrote scenes as I felt like, or used workshop exercises to stimulate the imagination and see what showed up. (Which works out pretty well for me, most of those exercises found their way into the final draft in one form or another).

On the other hand, I’d like to just start at the beginning and end at the end this time…but maybe it’s better not to fix what’s not broken.

I’m also trying to pick apart an older work, a task that has become way more difficult than I ever imagined. It depresses me terribly, for reasons I’m not going to get into right now. I suppose I could just let it go, but the story, in whatever form it’s currently taking, demands to be written. I can’t *NOT* write it. Inwardly, I’m two parts heartbroken and one part elated, but it’s such a tentative thing. The new piece bears very little resemblance to what it was before. In fact, I’m not even sure it’s remotely the same story. Which might not be a bad thing, but only time is going to tell.

It’s not a romance anymore – if, indeed, it ever was. It has romantic elements in it, and a romance is part of the story…but it’s more of a straight fantasy than anything else, now. (Thinking it’s going to be something of a bastard love-child of a novel – like if
Jacqueline Carey and Sarah Monette and Anne Bishop decided to write something together…) As I’m discovering, though – genre can be so terribly fluid, so I’m not going to hold myself to anything other than getting it written.

It can be an extremely painful process, writing.

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