Next endeavor

I’m still revising and still getting tired of the old project.

At one point I thought the thing was okay. It seems the more time I spend on it; the more doubts have about it. Been working on it coming up on two years and I’ve felt pretty good about. The endless tweaking and wrestling over fine points gets tiring.

That equates to less time for the new one. Ah, the next project. I’m close. I start too many things without wrapping up loose ends. I want to see the old one to finish. But I’ve got this other story that’s been stewing and I’m about ready to pull it off the back burner. Maybe I can close it out this month just in time for NaNoWriMo.

I love the act of writing. I’m coming to appreciate the value of time spent on developing, story mapping, or whatnot before fingers take to keyboard. I wrote one book and took it to WIFYR (on it’s second time) to discover it was vague and wandering. Had most of it worked out by the next conference, but that was only after figuring out the direction.

Direction good. A story still needs the freedom to wander and go to unintended places.

I’ve got an idea for the new project, a very rough idea of where it’s heading. The two main characters are in mind and a few events mapped out in my head. The genre is a tricky part. My favorite is historical fiction, a view not many share. There seems to be a disconnect with history and young readers. As the market speaks, so publishers go for other genres, fantasy, for example.

Yet historical can be like fantasy, minus the flying dragons and such. Real people, just like us, but in an other world. Setting becomes its own character.

Take A Game of Thrones, a riveting series by George R. R. Martin and a current fascination of my wife and I on TV. How different is its medieval-like setting from our earlier human existence? Martin’s main characters jockey for position as their drive for power drives the story. Lords and Ladies, noble houses, greed, deception, assassins, war: Game has it all. It could have been set in feudal Europe of the 1300s. It’s the same kind of stuff Shakespeare wrote. Minus the dragon eggs, of course. Historical fiction has its place.

That’s the next project, after The End on the old one.