What AM I Going to Write About? In Which I Still Haven't Figured Out What My Story Is
I realized writing the date in my journal this morning that yesterday was the first anniversary of the death of Diana Wynne Jones, and, conversely, the birth of the Pipeweed Mafia, a series of ridiculous Real Person fanfiction I wrote last year which was... well, the most FUN thing I wrote last year at any rate. The other day, when I posted my rambling posting-to-kill-time post, elouise82 commented that I should write a post about, literally, What I want to write about, and this all seems to fit together.
So it's been a year, a year since I realized that my purpose in life, at least as a writer, was to highlight the kooky and offkilter, to look at the world in a unique way, like Diana Wynne Jones did. It's been a year since I remembered that writing was supposed to be fun, that it was supposed to be silly, that I could create a complicated conspiracy theory out of stretching real life and it would be, if not much USE, at least a bit of a laugh. Beyond the 24 pages of Pipeweed Mafia stories (two of which are even still incomplete), I haven't actually written much this past year. I've even gotten out of the habit of writing to prompts, as all I have time and energy for writing first thing in the morning is a bit about what I dreamt and, look, the kids have burst in and started jumping on me again.
But I had a lot of things to deal with this past year. I knew I had to get my head screwed on straight again before I could concentrate on any writing that wasn't journaling. So Louise asks what it is I WANT to write, what stories or ideas or dreams or concepts I have spinning around in there that I'd love to share with the world. And I JUST DON'T KNOW! I hear that everyone has a story to tell, their story that only they can write, but I don't know anymore what mine is. I'm not even sure what genre or, to be perfectly honest, what age level I want to write for anymore (much as my life has always revolved around middle grade lit).
All my life, the underlying theme of my fiction has been "several disconnected people have an adventure together and become better friends in the process." It stems back to my earliest stories, which were written by an incredibly lonely little bookworm who truly believed that, if only a BOOK ADVENTURE would happen, then her peers would be forced to work together with her and come to appreciate all her hidden strengths. All my stories starred groups of kids I really knew who ended up finding doorways to other worlds, meeting aliens or leprechans or ghosts, solving crimes, exploring secret passages, and getting to know each other. One of the reasons-- possibly THE reason-- Barbara Lehman has become one of my new favorite illustrators is that her books all seem to tell variations on this same story-- magic is found in unexpected places, and friendships are forged. So part of my answer, to What I want to write, is that I want to write stories that are the prose equivalent of Barbara Lehman's books.
But exactly what shape those stories will take is less clear to me. I haven't got any PARTICULAR stories I'm dying to write, and I still have the very nasty habit of automatically shooting down every idea I DO come up with.
--I still don't know what I'm doing with Ian Schafer and Billy 'Arrison and Ashlynn Mihalski and Hannie Garrick-- an incredible group of imaginary teenagers (granted, two of them are loosely based on real people who are now in their thirties, and one is a conglomeration of several real people-- but Billy is still pretty much completely imaginary!) with an amazing chemistry that I love to play with, but their adventures-- well, I'm still not sure if I can ever make them MAKE ANY SENSE, and I've been trying to make sense of them for ten years-- not counting the seven more years before that when I was just writing a ridiculous story about people I really knew, for fun.
--For the past three years I've been toying with the concept of a girl who becomes friends with her favorite fictional character, but I can't get much more beyond the CONCEPT and into the story.
--I keep trying to figure out how I can make the Pipeweed Mafia stories Useable-- how I can somehow split them off from the real people and organizations and copyrighted material that is so inherently woven into them and tell a similar story using some of the best concepts. For example, I really want to use this character based on my dear friend punterschlagen because she is awesome. She (the real one) insists that she (also the real one) is not nearly as awesome as the character is, but I think she IS more than she realizes, even if she is not the Official Paladin of the Mythopoeic Society. But that's beside the point. The point is I've got this great character (regardless of how awesome the real one is) who is the Official Paladin of the Mythopoeic Society, but I'm not sure if the real Mythopoeic Society would have a problem with that. And the best part is, she has an Aslan-in-a-Bucket. It doesn't work if it's not Aslan. When's Narnia going to go into the Public Domain? Because maybe I just have to wait until then before I can use the Aslan-in-a-Bucket in a proper story.
--For most of my life, I have always written "BOOKS." They had chapters. They were long and complicated. But now I wonder if I need to start focusing on short stories for awhile, until I rebuild my confidence as a writer. It's a different way of thinking about writing. I always made my stories long and complicated, and then never finished them. But maybe I should not think so hard, and focus instead on completing a simple plot arc, instead of falling in love with characters and trying to wrestle them into a novel-length story for decades.
--Sometimes I wonder if maybe I'm not a fiction writer after all. Maybe I'm an essayist, a journaler, a blogger. It's still writing. But then, I'm not so sure about this. Maybe it's just waves, phases of my life. I've been in an essayist/blogging phase the past few years. But maybe there's still fiction in me. Certainly my dreams indicate a fantastic streak.
So I don't know. Does this answer your question, Louise? Does this answer MY question, me? If I kept writing here, would I hit on something brilliant and enlightening? Possibly, but the kids have disappeared and I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE INTO. Bringing up the OTHER reason why I can't quite focus on writing. It's no coincidence that my current troubles with Actually Being a Writer started five years ago...
So it's been a year, a year since I realized that my purpose in life, at least as a writer, was to highlight the kooky and offkilter, to look at the world in a unique way, like Diana Wynne Jones did. It's been a year since I remembered that writing was supposed to be fun, that it was supposed to be silly, that I could create a complicated conspiracy theory out of stretching real life and it would be, if not much USE, at least a bit of a laugh. Beyond the 24 pages of Pipeweed Mafia stories (two of which are even still incomplete), I haven't actually written much this past year. I've even gotten out of the habit of writing to prompts, as all I have time and energy for writing first thing in the morning is a bit about what I dreamt and, look, the kids have burst in and started jumping on me again.
But I had a lot of things to deal with this past year. I knew I had to get my head screwed on straight again before I could concentrate on any writing that wasn't journaling. So Louise asks what it is I WANT to write, what stories or ideas or dreams or concepts I have spinning around in there that I'd love to share with the world. And I JUST DON'T KNOW! I hear that everyone has a story to tell, their story that only they can write, but I don't know anymore what mine is. I'm not even sure what genre or, to be perfectly honest, what age level I want to write for anymore (much as my life has always revolved around middle grade lit).
All my life, the underlying theme of my fiction has been "several disconnected people have an adventure together and become better friends in the process." It stems back to my earliest stories, which were written by an incredibly lonely little bookworm who truly believed that, if only a BOOK ADVENTURE would happen, then her peers would be forced to work together with her and come to appreciate all her hidden strengths. All my stories starred groups of kids I really knew who ended up finding doorways to other worlds, meeting aliens or leprechans or ghosts, solving crimes, exploring secret passages, and getting to know each other. One of the reasons-- possibly THE reason-- Barbara Lehman has become one of my new favorite illustrators is that her books all seem to tell variations on this same story-- magic is found in unexpected places, and friendships are forged. So part of my answer, to What I want to write, is that I want to write stories that are the prose equivalent of Barbara Lehman's books.
But exactly what shape those stories will take is less clear to me. I haven't got any PARTICULAR stories I'm dying to write, and I still have the very nasty habit of automatically shooting down every idea I DO come up with.
--I still don't know what I'm doing with Ian Schafer and Billy 'Arrison and Ashlynn Mihalski and Hannie Garrick-- an incredible group of imaginary teenagers (granted, two of them are loosely based on real people who are now in their thirties, and one is a conglomeration of several real people-- but Billy is still pretty much completely imaginary!) with an amazing chemistry that I love to play with, but their adventures-- well, I'm still not sure if I can ever make them MAKE ANY SENSE, and I've been trying to make sense of them for ten years-- not counting the seven more years before that when I was just writing a ridiculous story about people I really knew, for fun.
--For the past three years I've been toying with the concept of a girl who becomes friends with her favorite fictional character, but I can't get much more beyond the CONCEPT and into the story.
--I keep trying to figure out how I can make the Pipeweed Mafia stories Useable-- how I can somehow split them off from the real people and organizations and copyrighted material that is so inherently woven into them and tell a similar story using some of the best concepts. For example, I really want to use this character based on my dear friend punterschlagen because she is awesome. She (the real one) insists that she (also the real one) is not nearly as awesome as the character is, but I think she IS more than she realizes, even if she is not the Official Paladin of the Mythopoeic Society. But that's beside the point. The point is I've got this great character (regardless of how awesome the real one is) who is the Official Paladin of the Mythopoeic Society, but I'm not sure if the real Mythopoeic Society would have a problem with that. And the best part is, she has an Aslan-in-a-Bucket. It doesn't work if it's not Aslan. When's Narnia going to go into the Public Domain? Because maybe I just have to wait until then before I can use the Aslan-in-a-Bucket in a proper story.
--For most of my life, I have always written "BOOKS." They had chapters. They were long and complicated. But now I wonder if I need to start focusing on short stories for awhile, until I rebuild my confidence as a writer. It's a different way of thinking about writing. I always made my stories long and complicated, and then never finished them. But maybe I should not think so hard, and focus instead on completing a simple plot arc, instead of falling in love with characters and trying to wrestle them into a novel-length story for decades.
--Sometimes I wonder if maybe I'm not a fiction writer after all. Maybe I'm an essayist, a journaler, a blogger. It's still writing. But then, I'm not so sure about this. Maybe it's just waves, phases of my life. I've been in an essayist/blogging phase the past few years. But maybe there's still fiction in me. Certainly my dreams indicate a fantastic streak.
So I don't know. Does this answer your question, Louise? Does this answer MY question, me? If I kept writing here, would I hit on something brilliant and enlightening? Possibly, but the kids have disappeared and I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE INTO. Bringing up the OTHER reason why I can't quite focus on writing. It's no coincidence that my current troubles with Actually Being a Writer started five years ago...