On Writing

I haven't written much of anything this week. Why?

Because I started reading, and I got sucked in, and I enjoyed it so much I continued on to read everything else I could find by the same author.

Hardly unusual for me. Barely even worth a mention, except for who the author is.

Me.

I got sucked into my own writing. I started out looking for details on something KT and I had written in Circle in the Sand. (Specifically, if you're curious, I couldn't remember if I'd described one minor character as tall or short. He's going to play a slightly more significant role in the bit I'm writing now, and I don't want to be inconsistent.) But once I'd started reading, I kind of... kept going.

(Which is not to say that it doesn't need work, because the first half is moderately horrible -- I spent a lot of time wanting to smack every single major character upside the head for acting like an emo teenager -- and there are a few plot holes, but the writing... the writing is actually quite good.)

And then I went on to read two novella-length pieces I did that were set in a world KT invented. They were world-building exercises and character pieces. I was trying to get a handle on her world's magic system, and the various races who inhabited it, and exploring the motivations of some of the background characters. Human Aspect was so good that I was literally shocked. When I finished it, I couldn't move for almost five minutes. Feylin's Forge stretched on longer than it should have, but if I cut it off at the natural stopping point, then I'd lose one of the most fantastic battle scenes I've ever written. (Which is not saying much, admittedly, because msot of my fight scenes are horrible.) It's also, coincidentally, one of the few pieces I've written without a single sex or romance scene, primarily because someone (Karen, maybe?) wondered if I was capable of writing anything without dragging sex into it. (I sort of cheated and made the main female character about thirteen years old, and the main male character already in love with someone else, offstage.)

I wondered if it was KT's touch that made the difference, and I dug out two more novella-length pieces I'd written for my own world. I wrote those entirely by myself, and they still sucked me in. There's a major plothole in Willow Bough, and there's a relationship development that I rushed, that ought to be dragged out over several chapters, and the ending doesn't quite satisfy, somehow. But I had forgotten some of the details that, on re-reading, took my breath away. Tangled Web was a little confusing in places -- I need to make it clearer exactly how the bad guy manipulated things at the beginning -- but I still liked it.

Today, I might attempt to read a more recent piece, but I'm not sure. One Heart, One Mind is semi-scifi rather than fantasy, and I'm not sure the world's rules quite hang together, and I remember the plot being a bit... rushed. But I remember thinking that Willow Bough was really quite awful and weak, so maybe I should give it a try.

It's too bad that my best stuff is novella-length, because the market for that is pretty much nil.

(On consideration, I seem to have a yen for characters with particularly violent and abusive childhoods. I'd hate to have my stuff psychoanalyzed.)

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good with myself today. Let's hope it lasts.