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kill the writer's block. kill it with fire.
So I realized that my depression is slowly but surely killing my muse. And somehow my bingo cards which looked fun, don't give me inspiration. I loved to write H/C fics, but now I just can't, sometimes I want to write downright tragedy, and the prompts were suffocating me, so I won't be completing my H/C bingo. Same for Ladies' bingo, I really want to write gen and femslash, but with the themes, I have only hetero or male-centric gen in my mind and that defeats the purpose.
The long fics I longed to write? Yeah, you know me, I outline everything with painstaking details and when I'm done with something, usually I fell out of love with the ship: see my only finished outline is for TVD, and thank you, I'm not going to invest that much time in that fandom. Though I love the fans and their feedback, the canon made me hate Elena, my all time favorite character. You could say, write for s3 only, but I just can't. It's like with Fringe and Merlin, their last season characterizations killed my fan love. :(
Also, I have so many ships, and I really do mean many, that while I have one idea, and I work on it, the next I know I want to write for that another shiny ship. My attention span is terrible and the depression is just making it worse. (Also my sickness.)
I want to write epic long fics with twisty plot - but with an open canon I just can't do it because every episode adds something inspiring, so I could write only in the summer. And with a closed canon I just lost interest if I don't watch the goddamned movie once a week.
I want to write for all my rare ships, because yay some people ship it, but I only got feedback if I'm lucky, I KNOW it's okay, and I'm not doing it to be famous or something. Even if one person says they totally loved it, I grin for a day - and that's a feat for me.
I want to write for the few not so rare ships I love, but I can't. I'll be honest I kinda lose interest or just go 'blah' if a ship has so many fics and they're the same generic romantic coffee shop au/hs au/pwp. I like well-written PWPs, and I know tastes are different. But I just have a terrible writer's block every time I try to portray the juggernaut pairing as I ship it, because it's totally not like the BNFs are doing. And it's also okay, but you know more readers more pressure to be perfect. (Which I'm not, but I try to be in an unhealthy degree - my psychiatrist said so...)
So I kinda work against myself... And now I have four review copies from publishers, AND I had to turn down one publisher because I have a one month per four review copies policy. (You may not know it, but in my country, you have to read review copies in a month, strictly.)
I really don't know what I should do - I'll do NaNoWriMo, that's for sure. First time in English. I found my style thanks to fanfics, so it's kind of a monologue-y, character and emotional-centric thing, which clashed with my love for urban fantasy. I mean, the action-packed, bamm-bamm things I used to write were lighthearted, though bloody, but they generally would make an action movie. But now I know I'm more character-centric, and so I'm working something generally darker. I overdid my last novel with depression and things, and that was the main thing about my MC, I totally forgot that she was a person, a living-breathing creature with good and bad, and I just wrote so many bad things it not just was depressing - although the readers loved it - but it was too much, too dry, it clashed with the main plot, it was wonky.
But know I have an MC, who has problems, real life problems, she's not just depressed, she has friendships that are changing, she has parents and problems with them - do they define her? does she have to love them? is there a thing as forgiveness if the crime is too big? -, and yes, there will be love (the only positive thing). So there's this very human aspect of this story, and I wanted to write magical realism, because I wanted to focus on the human things and doing a parallel with some haunting horror fantasy elements, and well, it's still not decided if the two worlds will collide and you can tell if it's fantasy or not.
But the fantasy world is really tempting me to write - something gritty, nothing exactly mythological just looming shadows with sharp teeth and sharper smiles. Maybe like ghouls and changing into the last person they ate, I still don't know, but I have this: it will be another world, and the MC falls into that crazy world, where she HAS TO fight otherwise she dies and this will bring out her will to live. It will be a mirror world, but I still haven't decided if all of the Real World characters will have a mirror self (I have to have the detailed characters for that to work) and it will be like a slight parallel between the Mirrors and the Reals and their problems or there will be total different characters.
I don't know if it will be in the finished novel, but I have these things in question:
- A new friend, who is a girl, a radiant personality, who helps the MC. I don't know how I could introduce her and how she fits into the story.
- If the monster who escapes wears the MCs face while it's out there and alienates others from the MC. This was my original idea, that the MC is trapped in the Mirror while watching as a monster - depression, I KNOW I'M FUCKING SUBTLE - ruining her life.
- I have to work on the Mirror's world-building - I'm thinking something gritty, almost post-apocalyptic, where monsters are running wild and the plot... also why the MC is falling in and out of the two worlds. (Note: I HAD AN IDEA SUDDENLY! How useful is to just babble on and on.)
- I wanted to write something that feels true. If it's a dark fantasy I can't write happy ending, if it's magical realism I can. I need to know my plotlines better. Originally the romance was restricted only the Mirror world and because that was supposed to be the MC's fantasizing, it wasn't real, but now I have the full romance plot tied to Real world, it would feel empty and not to mention pointless if they wouldn't get together -> it has a happy, hopeful ending. But I don't know how I can manage that with the dark themes. I wanted to kill an important character, but again, it was for effect and drama, it felt like an overkill. I kill someone else, but I don't know how it will come across. I don't want this book to be about grief and it's an ending scene, if I kill the important character I wanted first, the readers would feel cheated, and my MC would be catatonic - big no. SEE Tabitha Suzuma's Hurt. It was a terrible ending and I didn't cry, I felt cheated and was frustrated with the story.
The romance is also an inspiring plotline, because although it has the cliché new neighbor thing (really, I couldn't make it any other way, you have to camp outside my MC's house if you want to at least get her to talk if you're a stranger to her), it's nice and sweet. It's not some mysterious, strange, sexy guy sporting a golden heart deep down the jerk facade. (I sometimes like these, if they're well-written.) It will be mostly about someone helping my MC to see the light and herself in new light. And yep, we're circled back to the question if I should add a new girl character.
Blah, it wasn't what I wanted to write about, so see you in my next post. Again.
The long fics I longed to write? Yeah, you know me, I outline everything with painstaking details and when I'm done with something, usually I fell out of love with the ship: see my only finished outline is for TVD, and thank you, I'm not going to invest that much time in that fandom. Though I love the fans and their feedback, the canon made me hate Elena, my all time favorite character. You could say, write for s3 only, but I just can't. It's like with Fringe and Merlin, their last season characterizations killed my fan love. :(
Also, I have so many ships, and I really do mean many, that while I have one idea, and I work on it, the next I know I want to write for that another shiny ship. My attention span is terrible and the depression is just making it worse. (Also my sickness.)
I want to write epic long fics with twisty plot - but with an open canon I just can't do it because every episode adds something inspiring, so I could write only in the summer. And with a closed canon I just lost interest if I don't watch the goddamned movie once a week.
I want to write for all my rare ships, because yay some people ship it, but I only got feedback if I'm lucky, I KNOW it's okay, and I'm not doing it to be famous or something. Even if one person says they totally loved it, I grin for a day - and that's a feat for me.
I want to write for the few not so rare ships I love, but I can't. I'll be honest I kinda lose interest or just go 'blah' if a ship has so many fics and they're the same generic romantic coffee shop au/hs au/pwp. I like well-written PWPs, and I know tastes are different. But I just have a terrible writer's block every time I try to portray the juggernaut pairing as I ship it, because it's totally not like the BNFs are doing. And it's also okay, but you know more readers more pressure to be perfect. (Which I'm not, but I try to be in an unhealthy degree - my psychiatrist said so...)
So I kinda work against myself... And now I have four review copies from publishers, AND I had to turn down one publisher because I have a one month per four review copies policy. (You may not know it, but in my country, you have to read review copies in a month, strictly.)
I really don't know what I should do - I'll do NaNoWriMo, that's for sure. First time in English. I found my style thanks to fanfics, so it's kind of a monologue-y, character and emotional-centric thing, which clashed with my love for urban fantasy. I mean, the action-packed, bamm-bamm things I used to write were lighthearted, though bloody, but they generally would make an action movie. But now I know I'm more character-centric, and so I'm working something generally darker. I overdid my last novel with depression and things, and that was the main thing about my MC, I totally forgot that she was a person, a living-breathing creature with good and bad, and I just wrote so many bad things it not just was depressing - although the readers loved it - but it was too much, too dry, it clashed with the main plot, it was wonky.
But know I have an MC, who has problems, real life problems, she's not just depressed, she has friendships that are changing, she has parents and problems with them - do they define her? does she have to love them? is there a thing as forgiveness if the crime is too big? -, and yes, there will be love (the only positive thing). So there's this very human aspect of this story, and I wanted to write magical realism, because I wanted to focus on the human things and doing a parallel with some haunting horror fantasy elements, and well, it's still not decided if the two worlds will collide and you can tell if it's fantasy or not.
But the fantasy world is really tempting me to write - something gritty, nothing exactly mythological just looming shadows with sharp teeth and sharper smiles. Maybe like ghouls and changing into the last person they ate, I still don't know, but I have this: it will be another world, and the MC falls into that crazy world, where she HAS TO fight otherwise she dies and this will bring out her will to live. It will be a mirror world, but I still haven't decided if all of the Real World characters will have a mirror self (I have to have the detailed characters for that to work) and it will be like a slight parallel between the Mirrors and the Reals and their problems or there will be total different characters.
I don't know if it will be in the finished novel, but I have these things in question:
- A new friend, who is a girl, a radiant personality, who helps the MC. I don't know how I could introduce her and how she fits into the story.
- If the monster who escapes wears the MCs face while it's out there and alienates others from the MC. This was my original idea, that the MC is trapped in the Mirror while watching as a monster - depression, I KNOW I'M FUCKING SUBTLE - ruining her life.
- I have to work on the Mirror's world-building - I'm thinking something gritty, almost post-apocalyptic, where monsters are running wild and the plot... also why the MC is falling in and out of the two worlds. (Note: I HAD AN IDEA SUDDENLY! How useful is to just babble on and on.)
- I wanted to write something that feels true. If it's a dark fantasy I can't write happy ending, if it's magical realism I can. I need to know my plotlines better. Originally the romance was restricted only the Mirror world and because that was supposed to be the MC's fantasizing, it wasn't real, but now I have the full romance plot tied to Real world, it would feel empty and not to mention pointless if they wouldn't get together -> it has a happy, hopeful ending. But I don't know how I can manage that with the dark themes. I wanted to kill an important character, but again, it was for effect and drama, it felt like an overkill. I kill someone else, but I don't know how it will come across. I don't want this book to be about grief and it's an ending scene, if I kill the important character I wanted first, the readers would feel cheated, and my MC would be catatonic - big no. SEE Tabitha Suzuma's Hurt. It was a terrible ending and I didn't cry, I felt cheated and was frustrated with the story.
The romance is also an inspiring plotline, because although it has the cliché new neighbor thing (really, I couldn't make it any other way, you have to camp outside my MC's house if you want to at least get her to talk if you're a stranger to her), it's nice and sweet. It's not some mysterious, strange, sexy guy sporting a golden heart deep down the jerk facade. (I sometimes like these, if they're well-written.) It will be mostly about someone helping my MC to see the light and herself in new light. And yep, we're circled back to the question if I should add a new girl character.
Blah, it wasn't what I wanted to write about, so see you in my next post. Again.