Giving in
All week, I’ve been struggling with the short story I’ve been trying to write. “Project block” is what Kris Rusch calls it - and I think that’s right. I don’t ever get writer’s block - I can always write. I get project block, though, when there’s something wrong with a project and I can’t figure it out.
So this morning, while I was walking, I asked my muse, as I am wont to do, “If I could write anything at all, what would you like for me to work on?”
My muse was strangely silent. No project sprang to mind, no new story or idea I wanted to explore.
This was odd. Very odd for me.
At some point close to the end of my walk, I started thinking about the world of “The Raven and the Dancing Tiger” and the shadows and various things, and my muse perked up.
Also very odd.
So I asked myself, “Would you like to work on this?” “This” being, in general, the next novel, playing in that world, etc.
My mind lit up.
That’s about the best I can do to explain how it felt. Suddenly, all these story ideas were there, all these connections were being made, and this weight was lifted off my muse. I felt like I was glowing and could run forever with these ideas.
See, I’d told myself earlier that I wasn’t going to work on the next novel until January. I believe this was why my muse was initially silent - I’d already told it, in effect, “No, you can’t work on that.”
I’m not giving up on the idea of a short story a week. It’s just that the next short story (the one that I’m writing this week, that has to be finished by Sunday, that I’m only starting on tonight) is going to be, “The Tiger’s Shadow,” which is back story for the novel. It’s historic fantasy, set in India, around 1947.
Maybe that will satisfy my muse and I can write another short story set somewhere else. Or maybe I’ll have to just start writing the novel. The following “short story” may end up being the first chapter of the novel, more backstory, as it were. I’m not convinced that “The Guardian Hound” is going to have the same structure as “The Raven and the Dancing Tiger” - with current day and backstory chapters intermixed.
I will be on vacation ALL OF NEXT WEEK (not that I’m excited about that or anything!) So I hope I can get a lot of writing done.
Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.