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Like some famous person (Gloria Steinem, I think) said, I don't really want to write. I want to have written. I've gotten royalties for several things I've done over the years, and it is lovely, because you don't have to do a lot other than look at the check on the way to the bank and go, "Gee, aren't I clever for having written this!"
Having written the four royalty-producing items (a game, a spinoff from the game, and two choose-the-path style adventures), plus having been a writer-editor at Steve Jackson Games many years ago, I have something of an advantage over other wannabee writers. I know I can do it. It's a matter of getting off my butt and writing, or more like onto my butt and writing. The problem is in my case, all too often I get these great ideas and then . . . thud. They hit the page in the notebook where I put all the great ideas I get between the time I go "hey, I should write this" and "one of these days, I really should start working on this." And there they stay.
Right at the moment I have two ideas I think would make good novels. One is based on a dream my daughter told me she had when she was doped up on Robitussin. It's Gothic, and that's all I'd probably better say about it, because ideas tend to dissipate even faster when you start talking about them than they do when you just let them hang around your brain until they die of loneliness. The other is a sort of roman a clef about my childhood. I know quite a few of the elements that will go into it, primarily bullying, salvation through technology and a sympathetic adult who "gets" the kid's need for salvation where other adults in his life don't. What I don't know is the exact form this will take. I don't think I can set it in 1960s middle America of the current reality for several reasons, but moving it to a steampunk setting is going to take some heavy duty research.
Oh, and there might be vampires involved. Ones that don't sparkle, and don't have your best interests at heart. And definitely not vegetarian.
This all might be easier if I use a recipe to do it. Not a cookie cutter "you have to put the heroine in danger somewhere between pages 120 and 125" type of recipe, but a recipe like the one outlined in Robert Ray's The Weekend Novelist, where you start out doing character sketches of three main characters (the protagonist, the antagonist, and the helper who gets the protagonist past the antagonist) and then move on from there to establishing motivation and conflict, and from there to plot.
A writers' group would be a great resource for this sort of thing. Unfortunately I don't know any writers closer than, oh say Tacoma. I know Seattle is crawling with writers, I just don't know any personally. Even then, since I don't drive so it's hard to get out to someone's house or a coffee shop for a meeting. Maybe I should find a few local writers who want to get together on Skype or something. The Antisocial Writers Society, yeah, that's us.
Having written the four royalty-producing items (a game, a spinoff from the game, and two choose-the-path style adventures), plus having been a writer-editor at Steve Jackson Games many years ago, I have something of an advantage over other wannabee writers. I know I can do it. It's a matter of getting off my butt and writing, or more like onto my butt and writing. The problem is in my case, all too often I get these great ideas and then . . . thud. They hit the page in the notebook where I put all the great ideas I get between the time I go "hey, I should write this" and "one of these days, I really should start working on this." And there they stay.
Right at the moment I have two ideas I think would make good novels. One is based on a dream my daughter told me she had when she was doped up on Robitussin. It's Gothic, and that's all I'd probably better say about it, because ideas tend to dissipate even faster when you start talking about them than they do when you just let them hang around your brain until they die of loneliness. The other is a sort of roman a clef about my childhood. I know quite a few of the elements that will go into it, primarily bullying, salvation through technology and a sympathetic adult who "gets" the kid's need for salvation where other adults in his life don't. What I don't know is the exact form this will take. I don't think I can set it in 1960s middle America of the current reality for several reasons, but moving it to a steampunk setting is going to take some heavy duty research.
Oh, and there might be vampires involved. Ones that don't sparkle, and don't have your best interests at heart. And definitely not vegetarian.
This all might be easier if I use a recipe to do it. Not a cookie cutter "you have to put the heroine in danger somewhere between pages 120 and 125" type of recipe, but a recipe like the one outlined in Robert Ray's The Weekend Novelist, where you start out doing character sketches of three main characters (the protagonist, the antagonist, and the helper who gets the protagonist past the antagonist) and then move on from there to establishing motivation and conflict, and from there to plot.
A writers' group would be a great resource for this sort of thing. Unfortunately I don't know any writers closer than, oh say Tacoma. I know Seattle is crawling with writers, I just don't know any personally. Even then, since I don't drive so it's hard to get out to someone's house or a coffee shop for a meeting. Maybe I should find a few local writers who want to get together on Skype or something. The Antisocial Writers Society, yeah, that's us.
