In which I am still not writing
I now haven’t written anything since mid November and I suspect I won’t write anything more for the rest of the year, given that my children break up from school on the 17th and I will be having to keep them entertained until they go back again in January.
I feel a bit lost, to be honest. Part of this is that I have recently finished Shining in the Sun and got it accepted for publication, and my 18th Century mojo seems to have run out. I want to do something different, but I don’t really know what.
I have now completely re-plotted Away with the Faeries and I am lots happier with the plot I have now than I was when I was half way through Nano with it. This time things in the plot don’t just happen because it might be fun, they happen because they were caused by earlier things in the plot. This pleases my sense of neatness. I do need to think of a reason why Chitrasen can’t just turn up with his war elephants and take his daughter back by force, and how George and Sumala manage to get a message to him so that he can turn up just at the right time at the end instead. But that’s minor stuff compared with the addition of a het love story, a love triangle, a convoluted political rivalry and some serious backstory for both our main heroes which changes their characters and the dynamic of their relationship quite a lot.
I’m very glad I stopped to do that! I now feel that I know who the characters are much better, and I have a better idea of pacing. It’s going to be more bitter-sweet than I thought at first, and a lot more serious. Having said that, though, I think quite a bit of what I wrote during Nano can be cannibalised and may make it into the new version, so even that’s not wasted.
Perhaps my plan is to start writing that again as soon as the girls go back to school. Maybe I can spend the last few days before the holidays trying to come up with a plot for Dragon of the Fen, so that I can go straight on to that afterwards. And then I’ll have to think about what I want to do after that! But by that time it’ll probably be 2011 anyway 🙂