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Musings and muses
13 years ago
Ok, so I've been writing again. A different setting this time, Goddess Island. This one's a lot more explicit (even if most of the writing isn't). I love the concept and the characters, and I'm trying to avoid a flaw that happened in Hybrid University, though Goddess Island does share the big one.
The setting is in a bottle. The characters are largely trapped in one place. So there's not a lot to write about. It's usually just dealing with what these characters do with their daily lives. This isn't a horrible thing, there are several stories (soap operas etc.) that are designed in this way. But it is limited. And with Hybrid University, the ideas ran out. Sure, I had plans to deal with a younger group of hybrids, mostly the members of the band Instinct, and how they'd eventually make it out of the school and do performances in the real world. But it wasn't enough. It couldn't hold MY interest even long enough to write about it. (And, without my muse present, the writing wasn't that great, more on that later.) I had envisioned other points happening in Hybrid University as well, bits and pieces, but there wasn't enough for an ongoing arc, and there was literally nothing that could be used to fill the gaps between them. And I should have seen this coming, becuase this was the main problem with the original book. I had a few scenes to hit, and really nothing to fill the rest out with. Mind you, I think the story is there there, the struggle the early hybrids had, with how people dealt with them, with Glitter actually making it out, and then getting forced back in, and with the severity of Raj's problems changing how a lot of things were done. But I'm still lacking too many critical details, and I just don't know enough about certain topics (not the least of which being basic education principals that are somewhat necessary when dealing with a school) to properly hammer them out. So it stagnated on a back burner. I will, however, release a couple unfinished blurbs that I had into scraps. One of them is VERY short, and the other is something I consider to be some of my better work, at the beginning, that just falls into having nothing to do with the character anymore.
And this brings me to my new endeavor: Goddess Island. We have a lot of the same problem. The residents are on the island. interacting with largely themselves and that's it. But this time there is an out. The residents CAN get off the island, and interact with the world as a whole. Those interactions are just problematic. Not gonna lie, it's mostly fetish stuff, where the mainland is a place where they can go do what they like to do with minimal repercussions to them personally. The world suffers, they don't. But that concept appeals to me, so I plan on exploring it. Including going back into more detail, like I did with "Welcome to My World." Plus, you know, the setting has an all-powerful goddess in it. A goddess that serves MUCH better as a background plot device, an origin story, than a character herself. Which is why she, as of yet, has only appeared in - essencially - flashback. She will make appearances of her own though, assuming I keep writing. And that is, in part, up to you guys. I, like any creative type, crave feedback. The more I have, the more invested I am in continuing. Does that sound desperate, needy? Maybe. But the truth is the truth. Right now, I'm writing to please myself, but to continue, I hope to be pleasing others. Right now I am writing Goddess Island as an experiment, and as practice.
You see, I have finally made a story. A real plot, even with the connecting parts, from beginning to end, for at LEAST one book, with plans for a minimum of three others. These are books that, if I can manage to write them, I plan on trying to get actually published for sale. (Don't get me wrong, these are huge ifs, and may be years down the line, especially at the rate I am going.) But I need to actually make sure I'm good at writing before i do that. That's where these current stories come into play. I am probing myself for weaknesses, and I am finding them. I find that I am very weak with dialog, especially with multiple characters together. The characters begin sounding the same, blending together. This is something I need to really hammer down before I get going, how the various characters will act different from each other. I also notice that my writing style itself suffers during these bits. Where I can paint wonderful pictures elsewhere, when people are talking to each other, I seem to reduce to "x does y" style sentences. This isn't altogether too bad of a thing, I've been reading a bit for research and see several other highly successful authors doing the same thing to a degree. It is, after all, a limitation of the English language. But I still feel that I should be able to do better. So, for now, I practice when my muse isn't around.
Which brings me to the second part of the title. Muses. Or specifically, my muse. Which I apparently have to share with several other people. There are only so many muses to go around, you see, and there are a lot of people wanting to create things in this world. And my muse likes to pop up, drop the beginning of an idea, and then take off. She stuck around for nearly the entirety of "Welcome to My World", which is how I managed to belt that out in about six hours when the other stories have taken me about six days and six weeks respectively. It is my going theory that muses are fame vampires, of sorts. That they feed on attention. The more successful something is, the more likely the muse will come visit. And I toil in obscurity. Such is my lot in life, as you have to actually create something good to be successful, but muses won't stick around to see something completed if you haven't been successful. It's a bit of a catch 22, until you realize that it's your job to pick up that slack and run with it. After all, muses are inspiration, they are not there to do the work for you. Hence the need to practice. And hence, these stories. And I'm pretty sure she was just here for this journal. Sometimes it's hard to tell when she visits.
At any rate, the bottom line is that I am going to try to continue with these stories, to try to work out my weaknesses in them. I hope that they are good enough that some of you are enjoying them, even if you aren't commenting on them. And yes, they are LONG, I know that, that's just how I'm writing at the moment. More of writing "chapters" than specific scenes. After all, book practice. I just wanted to let anyone who was interested know what's going on with this account. Enjoy.
The setting is in a bottle. The characters are largely trapped in one place. So there's not a lot to write about. It's usually just dealing with what these characters do with their daily lives. This isn't a horrible thing, there are several stories (soap operas etc.) that are designed in this way. But it is limited. And with Hybrid University, the ideas ran out. Sure, I had plans to deal with a younger group of hybrids, mostly the members of the band Instinct, and how they'd eventually make it out of the school and do performances in the real world. But it wasn't enough. It couldn't hold MY interest even long enough to write about it. (And, without my muse present, the writing wasn't that great, more on that later.) I had envisioned other points happening in Hybrid University as well, bits and pieces, but there wasn't enough for an ongoing arc, and there was literally nothing that could be used to fill the gaps between them. And I should have seen this coming, becuase this was the main problem with the original book. I had a few scenes to hit, and really nothing to fill the rest out with. Mind you, I think the story is there there, the struggle the early hybrids had, with how people dealt with them, with Glitter actually making it out, and then getting forced back in, and with the severity of Raj's problems changing how a lot of things were done. But I'm still lacking too many critical details, and I just don't know enough about certain topics (not the least of which being basic education principals that are somewhat necessary when dealing with a school) to properly hammer them out. So it stagnated on a back burner. I will, however, release a couple unfinished blurbs that I had into scraps. One of them is VERY short, and the other is something I consider to be some of my better work, at the beginning, that just falls into having nothing to do with the character anymore.
And this brings me to my new endeavor: Goddess Island. We have a lot of the same problem. The residents are on the island. interacting with largely themselves and that's it. But this time there is an out. The residents CAN get off the island, and interact with the world as a whole. Those interactions are just problematic. Not gonna lie, it's mostly fetish stuff, where the mainland is a place where they can go do what they like to do with minimal repercussions to them personally. The world suffers, they don't. But that concept appeals to me, so I plan on exploring it. Including going back into more detail, like I did with "Welcome to My World." Plus, you know, the setting has an all-powerful goddess in it. A goddess that serves MUCH better as a background plot device, an origin story, than a character herself. Which is why she, as of yet, has only appeared in - essencially - flashback. She will make appearances of her own though, assuming I keep writing. And that is, in part, up to you guys. I, like any creative type, crave feedback. The more I have, the more invested I am in continuing. Does that sound desperate, needy? Maybe. But the truth is the truth. Right now, I'm writing to please myself, but to continue, I hope to be pleasing others. Right now I am writing Goddess Island as an experiment, and as practice.
You see, I have finally made a story. A real plot, even with the connecting parts, from beginning to end, for at LEAST one book, with plans for a minimum of three others. These are books that, if I can manage to write them, I plan on trying to get actually published for sale. (Don't get me wrong, these are huge ifs, and may be years down the line, especially at the rate I am going.) But I need to actually make sure I'm good at writing before i do that. That's where these current stories come into play. I am probing myself for weaknesses, and I am finding them. I find that I am very weak with dialog, especially with multiple characters together. The characters begin sounding the same, blending together. This is something I need to really hammer down before I get going, how the various characters will act different from each other. I also notice that my writing style itself suffers during these bits. Where I can paint wonderful pictures elsewhere, when people are talking to each other, I seem to reduce to "x does y" style sentences. This isn't altogether too bad of a thing, I've been reading a bit for research and see several other highly successful authors doing the same thing to a degree. It is, after all, a limitation of the English language. But I still feel that I should be able to do better. So, for now, I practice when my muse isn't around.
Which brings me to the second part of the title. Muses. Or specifically, my muse. Which I apparently have to share with several other people. There are only so many muses to go around, you see, and there are a lot of people wanting to create things in this world. And my muse likes to pop up, drop the beginning of an idea, and then take off. She stuck around for nearly the entirety of "Welcome to My World", which is how I managed to belt that out in about six hours when the other stories have taken me about six days and six weeks respectively. It is my going theory that muses are fame vampires, of sorts. That they feed on attention. The more successful something is, the more likely the muse will come visit. And I toil in obscurity. Such is my lot in life, as you have to actually create something good to be successful, but muses won't stick around to see something completed if you haven't been successful. It's a bit of a catch 22, until you realize that it's your job to pick up that slack and run with it. After all, muses are inspiration, they are not there to do the work for you. Hence the need to practice. And hence, these stories. And I'm pretty sure she was just here for this journal. Sometimes it's hard to tell when she visits.
At any rate, the bottom line is that I am going to try to continue with these stories, to try to work out my weaknesses in them. I hope that they are good enough that some of you are enjoying them, even if you aren't commenting on them. And yes, they are LONG, I know that, that's just how I'm writing at the moment. More of writing "chapters" than specific scenes. After all, book practice. I just wanted to let anyone who was interested know what's going on with this account. Enjoy.
