meanwhile, back on the writing front...

Hmmm. I seem to be on a blogging roll at the moment. I hadn't actually intended to get quite so longwinded on the Chinese takeout. However, that one ran really long and since I did want to talk about actual writing, too, I figured I'd do a second entry.

Unlike Robert who uses blogs to warm up to his fiction writing, I seem to be using blogs as a substitute for my fiction writing. :p I'll have to remember this little sidetrack the next time I think to myself "gee I think I'll warm up by writing a blog entry" ...

Anyway, at the moment I've more or less decided that I'd rather be writing instead of editting. That means I either need to reread Amulet II so I can finish it, or put in some more attempts on Amulet I if I want to just dive right in without looking at anything.

I've reread through the good parts of Amulet I. There were three scenes that I liked a lot - the ones that introduced minor characters that seemed to have their own ideas of what tales to tell that were separate from mine. Back in November I noticed this too, that the story looked like it wanted to go places by itself. I'm still curious where it wanted to go, especially since I haven't the foggiest idea how it should go. And I've been watching Robert work on his trilogy.

He started out with the simple thought of "I want to write something completely different from anything I've done before, and it has to be fantasy." Then I kept giving him different types of music until he found the right ones for his soundtrack. Then while he was listening to one of the songs that had words, he started saying things like "okay, so there's a dragon..."

20 days later and I think we've all seen the other end of that trail of thought. :)

I wish I could do that. I wonder if I can do that. Where characters just show up on their own and take charge of things, like two of them did for my mishmash of Amulet I/Taint. I'm thinking I should give it a whirl and see whether I get anywhere.

I've set up my file for it. There's now a new section in the Amulet I file that's titled "Something Completely Different." Think I'll just put the MC in the woods somewhere close to his tribal village and see what he does...