(It sounds like the title of a book/movie, no? The Peculiar Infinite Homework of the Carpenter’s Daughter in Yemen — A Novel, etc. God I find all those literary quirky titles really annoying. There’s something try hard about them that bugs the shit out of me. Tractors & peculiar & tears & salmon & bees & particular & daughters & lighthouses & solitude & confessions & so on. They sound like they’re being churned out of a literary fiction quirky title generator machine. Enough already.)
(Although as I cannot name my own stories — I am allergic, they are kryptontitles — perhaps I shouldn’t complain so viciously.)
Er, where was I?
No progress on any of the short stories. I even have a couple finished & not submitted anywhere & really I ought to do something about that. I found out about a women in crime shory story competition — the Scarlet Stiletto Award — last week and would like to give it a go. {starts sifting for ideas}
Long stuff — I’m dallying between Rukan and The Other You. A few words here & there on my writing nights. Mostly on Rukan, which is currently 7,500 words. I think it’s what I will focus on in the long run (once my job contract is finished & I can dedicate a couple of months to writing full time). Funnily enough I read some advice last week from author David Brin — he said new writers should concentrate on a murder mystery as their first piece of work, whatever the genre. The challenge of the plot, the uncovering, the whodunnit, the red herrings.
But The Other You tempts me. I love the words I have on it so far. As a story, it has a wholeness in my mind. Colours and light, a certain sort of melancholy crossed with longing. I see it. I find this hard to describe.
Rukan, I’m still discovering as a story. I don’t see it or feel it yet. I wonder if it’s because I don’t know the characters or setting well or because I don’t have a grasp on the themes and motifs. And I don’t like any of the words I’ve put on it yet. They’re all… blah.
I have found one of the characters, Iskandar, surprisingly easy to write — in his first POV scene I got SO much from him. He told me he doesn’t care for (what he thinks is) the farce of etiquette, he’s ambitious and serious and focused on his job, he’s uncomfortable with displays of emotion, he fears rejection — I think he might be full of extraordinary self-doubt. Writing him was like, Oh so you’re reacting this like because you’re feeling these emotions. And that must be because of what happened to you in the past. Interesting. Rukan, although I consciously know her backstory, is being more reserved as a character on the page. I gotta bring her voice forward.
And although I LOVE worldbuilding, I’m finding it slowing me down on this story. I have a lot of places where I want to put words down but can’t until I know how things work. So many [put stuff here] square bracket markers!
