Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Panda, as in Panda Bear

You Loved It Pipe
This new story is a struggle. I mean, I've had writer's block before and I've had stories that rip up my emotions but this one has it's own mess of internal issues. It came to me first by way of emotions. You can't write a book based on emotions. When all you get is that feeling coursing through your veins and the descriptions of such strong emotions, you just have to sit back and wait for the story to come to you or you have to make the conscious effort to push it in your direction. Either way, I was focused on my nano-inspired story and tried to focus my attention on one muse at a time. But in the back dark corners, this new muse kept peeking around the corner every once in a while. I'd get a glimpse of his yellow blond hair before he darted away. Until finally, he was starting to grow on me and emerge himself. There, now my story had been given a muse to play with. But what to do with him? The ideas had been swimming around my brain for months (and I do mean months) before I finally settled on a few. I found a great underlining story, a character conflict, to fuel some turmoil. Great! But none of this can actually pull together a whole novel--unless I want to amp up the conflict (which I didn't. It's character-driven, not story-driven) or make this into something small (which again, I didn't). So, I pushed through it. And lately it seems like my life would make the perfect story! But why lose that fun? I want to learn the story rather than already live it. So, I decided to play around with the ideas.
And finally it hit me. I had a perfect place for all of this to take place! It fit everything! It encompassed everything I wanted to say! But now I was stuck. I had emotions, a muse, underlining character conflicts and a place to play with them. Again, it was a bit of a waiting game. And thanks to an amazing author of mine, I found a new genre to play in. I already knew her struggles with it but decided to take it on. So now, here it goes. The characters are starting to really define themselves and I am in complete love with them.
This is exciting. This is why I write.