Dec 01, 2008 15:03
I'm almost there and, sure enough, I feel like a woman must feel at the end of a pregnancy: wanting to have the damn baby already and enough with the waddling around and the sore back. Not that I can truly compare my creative deliberations and impatience with having my stomach stretched out and a parasitic organism attaching an umbilical cord to my internal organs and sucking nutrition and other goodness out of me, but I needed a comparison so I took one.
For some odd reason, I decided that one of the 12 stories in the new collection I'm currently finishing up, should be divided into ten separate pieces, each based on a different song by a fictional American singer-songwriter along the lines of Jackson Browne or Warren Zevon.
Which is all great, and is thoroughly fun, something which I need writing to be if I'm to get through it in one mental piece, but the actual logistics of doing the story this way means that I end up doing almost as much work as if I was doing another nine stories. Also, on top of that is the fake research info I have to 'bible' out for the fictional singer's back catalogue and his quotes and so on and so forth about everyone from John Lennon, Michael Jackson, R Kelly and through to Trent Reznor.
It is fun, and I'm not complaining- just needing to share some of the processes I'm currently dealing with as it's such an experience.
Also, the fact that at least half of the pieces in this story are done in different formats such as blog, email, instant message conv. doesn't help cut down on the intensive work approach.
But, I think it'll pay off in the end, and it'll hopefully be like a treat in the middle of the book, a single story that opens out into all these little fun directions and morsels.
Only time and the readers of my book, when it comes out, can tell.