Today I’ll write a scene using characters I’m really familiar with. They are actually part of the novel that’s closest to completion. I mostly need to work on some plot points and pacing, and maybe expand a bit.

This is an action story, but writing an actual battle has always been really challenging. I think because I usually write fiction with a lot of dialogue and it’s hard to do an action sequence that way.

What characteristics would you suggest for a battle couple?

Good Monday Morning, friends! Here’s today’s prompt:

Pick two genres and mash them up.

I think there’s been a lot of this in recent years and it’s usually awesome. What two would you like to see combined? SciFi and Zombies? Apocalyptic Romance? Or what about Historical Apocalypse?

I’m using my Faerie/Steampunk novel for this one and working on some worldbuilding. This is a story I’ve already got a few chapters on, but I want to flesh out some of the genre/setting type stuff.

 

So this is a story set in a fictional late 19^th century. Traditionally, steampunk has roots in Jules Verne and early science fiction, but it takes technology further than what was available. There are lots of unrealistic steam-powered devices and often lots of clockwork. It’s also generally a good way to empower female characters with freedoms not common in Victorian times.

I’ve also added the world of Faerie. This genre has been especially popular in YA literature lately, and often takes well-known characters like Oberon, Titania, Mab, and Puck for example and puts them into a different setting. I’ve chosen to make the Faerie world overlap the real world.

Blending faeries and steampunk is unique in this case because often iron (and symbolically, technology) are harmful to faeries. I liked the idea of allowing the magical creatures to interact with and enjoy the technology. And it gives me the bonus of augmenting any tricky technological aspect with a boost of magic.

Several steampunk stories I’ve read have included actual people as minor characters, often Queen Victoria, or in Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan series, Nikola Tesla. So far, I’ve referenced Tesla and Edison, but I’m considering Arthur Conan Doyle. He’d be a particularly good fit because of the faerie aspect.

In the early 1900s, a series of photographs soon to be called the Cottingley Fairies began to circulate. These photos showed young girls surrounded by what appeared to be fairies of various types. Doyle was particularly enthusiastic about them and believed them to be true. As for how and when I’ll work him into the story, I haven’t decided yet, but it will be fun to allow him to be right in my world, rather than simply ridiculed as he was historically.

Another aspect of this story involves travel in an airship (very steampunk, although mine blends magic with the cogs and gears). I’ve had fun researching fairy stories from different European countries, so that my characters can encounter different types of faeries depending on where they are. I’m also considering an encounter with a Dracula-type vampire in Eastern Europe.

I actually have a fairly decent handle on the mythology of this world. The trouble has been blending it smoothly into the story, so that it’s not just huge chunks of background information. I have lots of places I’d like my characters to travel on their quest, but I’m still working on reasons for them to go from place to place. They’re trying to break a curse, but each destination needs to give them some kind of clue, either to solve the problem or lead them to the next location, or both. That’s the tricky part.

***

In related writing news, I’ve created a story binder; essentially printouts of the three stories I’d like to focus on. I’m working my way through the drafts as they stand and creating my lists, like I mentioned on Day 3. Creating nicely organized lists of what needs doing with enough information about the context and the problem will really help combat the issue I’d been having of wanting to work, but not knowing where to pick up the story. I’ll keep you updated as those lists progress, but I’m still undecided as to how much of the actual stories I’ll share here.

“If I could write a letter to me…” -Brad Paisley, Letter to Me

Since it’s back to school season, pick a year and write a message to yourself on the first day of school.

* I’ve never been very sentimental about high school, but I’ve chosen one of those years to write about.

Dear Me at the beginning of Freshman Year (2001),

This is going to be a big year. There will be tragedy and heartbreak, and lots of joy and growth. This year will change you, and you’ll come out better and stronger on the other side.

You’ve probably already figured this out, but your school is remodeling this year. Be flexible, but be careful. And be thankful that although you’ll have three different lockers this year, the combination only changes once.

Nothing I can say will prepare you for the tragedy that will unfold in September. But as you witness history, consider the words of Mister Rogers and “look for the helpers.” Great unity and strength come out of darkness.

Sixteen years later and I still feel unprepared to tell you about first love. Maybe it’s better if I don’t tell you much more than be brave and be you. He’ll like you for who you are. Let the butterflies flutter.

And yet, this first love won’t be your greatest. When the heartbreak comes, draw close to those around you. Take solace in your friends.

Take risks. Tryout for the play. Speak up. Work hard. Be you. As your world gets bigger and you meet more people, you’ll find more who share your interests. You’re not as weird as you think you are. (Well, maybe you are, but there are others who share that weirdness.)

I’m here to tell you that you’ll live a life you can only imagine right now. I’m here to tell you that life goes on after junior high. I’m here to tell you keep writing in that journal.

With love from me to me.

P.S. You are pretty and you don’t need a boy to tell you so.

This is my mental struggle today. Check back later for my thoughts on pushing through to the finish.

And because I know I won’t have THE ANSWER, I’d really love to hear your thoughts about this.

As I was working yesterday on the Blindfolded piece, I felt drawn to those characters. I’m curious what exactly is going on here, who’s kidnapped them and tried to kill the princess? Where exactly is this taking place? Is this going to be a love story? (I think it might be.)

But I’m afraid to let myself start exploring this story/world. I’m afraid to add another unfinished novel to my collection. At the same time, that seems a pretty foolish reason to force myself to resist this story.

The heart of this issue might actually be time. I ran across a quote by Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus (which I LOVE!), the other day. She calls herself a binge writer, since she first started during NaNoWriMo. Although I’ve not ever been successful at something that structured, looking back I notice that my best work has been done when I’ve focused on a single piece consistently over a period of time. My first draft of my first novel came together my junior year of high school.

Maybe that will be the best thing to come out of this 30 day challenge: the habit of sitting at the keyboard daily. It’s honestly unrealistic to expect to just jump back into a story when I haven’t touched it for months. And I think that’s been the cause of a lot of my frustrations lately with writing. I finally give myself an hour and open up a document that already has anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 words and then I expect the words to start flowing.

I’m pretty good at unrealistic expectations.

So the question here is, how to build a better routine? And the other question will be, once that routine is built, what story gets my attention?

I know that three days is not proof of concept yet, but I’ve been enjoying the challenge so far of posting something everyday. The outer accountability helps, but so does the variety of tasks I’ve set for myself. When I start working on a novel, I’m unlikely to be posting pieces of it daily to my blog. (Although, that is an option I could consider. It would be like the old-school serial magazine stories. But I’d want to have edited and polished pieces if that is the plan.)

So, I’ll need some form of accountability. And also the willingness to let some other tasks slide in favor of writing. Or let my need for sleep be shortened in favor of writing. Figuring out how to consistently make writing a priority has been a challenge for awhile now.

As far as what story gets my attention, would it really be that bad to just follow my instincts? At this moment, I’ve got three stories in various stages of development that I’d like to work on. The characters and their challenges have got their claws in me and I’ve got to figure out what happens. I wonder how much structure I’ll need.

Perhaps rather than simply opening the current draft and trying to pick up where I’ve left off, a better method might be creating lists of questions, stuck points, and scene ideas, and using those like the list of prompts I’m working from for this challenge. Sit down everyday and look at my lists. Decide which world, which characters are drawing my attention that day, and work on one piece. It might be pretty disjointed and take some intense editing, but I do really like the editing process anyway.

I spent most of today really struggling with this problem, and in the last 600+ words, I think I’ve hit upon a solution. Funny how putting your fingers on the keys can do that. Sit down and “type some stuff.”

As I was working on the pirate ship prompt, I couldn’t get this other story out of my head. I started this piece a while ago, so even though there’s way more than 500 words, they didn’t all come out today. I’m pretty pleased with it and if I had any idea what kind of plot was going on, I’d keep at it. Maybe someday

“Have you still got your blindfold on?” His voice came from where he was tied up behind me.

“Yes.”

“Promise me you won’t take it off.”

“Okay?” My voice shook and I hated it. A mental breakdown would definitely not help us now.

“You’ll be safer if they don’t think you’re resisting them.”

The engine rumbled and the tires kicked up bits of gravel that hit the sides of the vehicle with a metallic ping.

The driver took a corner too fast and the momentum pitched me across the bed of the truck. I landed against him and he groaned. Blindfolded and with my wrists and ankles bound, I shuffled awkwardly off of him to lean against the side.

“You’re hurt,” I said.

“Yes. Not bleeding, but they beat the shit out of me.” His voice was laced with pain.

“Why?”

“Because I got between them and you.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

“It’s my job, highness.” A smile crept into his voice.

He was new to my security detail, with more qualifications than the others. I wracked my panicked brains until his name came to me. Jared. Clearly the situation was more dangerous than I’d been lead to believe by my advisors.

“And now my job is to stick to you like glue. I’ve got a GPS chip implanted; they’ll find us.”

The truck stopped and I could hear the ocean. Hands grabbed me and yanked me roughly out of the truck. I could hear someone else pulling Jared out too. I stumbled on the rocky ground as I was pulled along.

“Say hello to the fishes, Princess.”

Suddenly I was falling. Instinctively I curled into a ball, hoping not to hit one of the rocks that dotted the coastline. The water was icy. I struggled upward, straining for air. My head broke the surface and I gulped down the salty air. Still bound, the best I could manage was a back float on the waves. I heard a splash and prayed that he’d survived the fall as well.

“Jared!” My voice shook and squeaked. I forced my body to stay relaxed and floating, but I fear coursed through me, chilling me as much as the water. The blindfold was soaked and pressed heavily against my eyes. Suddenly there was a second splash not far to my right. I screamed. Who was throwing who into the water now?

“Princess?” Jared’s voice carried over the waves.

“Here!” I shouted.

“Coming. Hold on.”

A third splash and soon arms came around me. He slid the blindfold off and I blinked the saltwater out of my eyes. The night was black and the lights of the city were too far away to be seen from here.

Jared held me with one arm and sliced the rope around my wrists with a knife.

“What happened up there?”

“Fought them off.”

“Tied up?”

“Don’t underestimate me, princess.”

I shook my head, teeth chattering, as he reached down to cut the ropes off my ankles.

“Can you swim?” He asked.

“Yes. Let’s go.” Fear of hypothermia had me anxious to get to land. Then I remembered that this stretch of coastline was a rocky cliff. We’d have a long way to swim before we could actually get out of the water. I stopped, treading water, and turned to face Jared. “Which way? I can’t climb a cliff.”

“We’ll just find a place to get out of the water. There’s got to be a shelf or even a cave if we’re lucky. We just have to wait for them to track my signal.”

***

I curled tighter wrapping my arms around myself fighting the shivers coursing through me. Beside me Jared cursed and pulled me closer under the Mylar emergency blanket from one of his cargo pockets, trying to share his body heat despite not having any to spare. Swimming and climbing up the rocky shore had warmed me slightly, but now, huddled in the dark sea cave, the adrenaline had worn off leaving me frozen.

We’d taken stock of our supplies earlier: the blanket, our soaking clothes, and the knife Jared had taken from our captors. No way to build a fire, and even if there was, I’m not sure we’d have been willing to risk drawing attention to ourselves.

“There’s nothing else to do, Princess. We’ll be warmer without these wet clothes.”

I nodded. Anything was better than freezing to death awaiting rescue. Shoving out from under the blanket into the cold night air, I quickly shucked off my sodden jeans, socks, and long sleeve shirt. In the process, I realized I only had one shoe. When I turned back, Jared had stripped off his wet things and was waiting, holding up one edge of the crinkly blanket.

He already felt warmer to my touch, and if I’d had any blood to spare, I’m sure I would’ve blushed at the way I plastered myself against him. Survival instincts leave no room for embarrassment.

After a minute, I heard his voice rumble through my ear against his chest, “Any better, highness?”

“I think so.” My teeth had stopped chattering long enough to reply. “Call me Rose. We’ve been kidnapped, nearly drowned, and now we’re wrapped in the same blanket in our underwear. I think that puts us on a first name basis.”

He chuckled and shifted his arms more comfortably around me.

“As you wish, Rose.”

 

I got a little serious yesterday, so here’s a little levity. Also, I laughed when I was rereading some of yesterday’s post about this blog being “about reality.” So here’s a heavy dose of fiction.

When I taught Composition at NDSU, I had Fiction Freewriting Fridays. This was one of the most successful prompts with my students, so now I’d like to try it.

 

“The trailer was just sitting in the parking lot.” Troy was still vibrating with energy, several hours after the heist. “So I backed my pick-up up to it, and next thing I know I’m cruising through town with a pirate ship behind me.”

I glanced out the window at the stolen homecoming float in the driveway. Yet another in a series of ever-escalating pranks between the two high schools in our city.

“You’re not just going to keep it in your driveway are you? That’s just asking to get your house egged and your truck keyed.” I raised my eyebrows at Troy. He was alright as a boyfriend, but it was true what they say about teenage boys and the undeveloped prefrontal lobe.

“Babe. I’d like to see them try. The guys and I are camping out in the yard tonight with paintball guns. Anyone who comes for this float will be marked!”

“It wasn’t enough to totally destroy them in their own homecoming football game? Whose idea was it to steal that pirate ship the night before the parade, anyway?”

“Good writing is clear thinking made visible.” -Bill Wheeler

I have a paperweight on my desk with that phrase on it. Is it accurate? What would you change it to? “Good writing is….?”

I agree with the spirit of this quote, but it could be misleading in the fact that it implies that the clear thinking comes before the good writing. But if this were the case, there would be no good writing.

For me, writing is the process of clarifying my thinking. When I was in grad school for English (for a year, pre-baby), my catchphrase became “go type some stuff.” Whether it was actually a paper, a group project, or simply to rearrange my thoughts to share aloud, I found a great deal of clarity in closing my mouth and putting my fingers to the keys.

You can find this suggestion in a lot of places. It’s the root of keeping a journal. The act of writing helps us to understand our thoughts and ourselves that much better. Some people swear by a certain pen or paper or keyboard. It doesn’t really make a difference to me, but often I find myself reaching for either the computer or a pencil. Apparently, I like to have the option to erase as I’m going along. (That’s something I just realized as I typed this. See, it does work!)

I keep wanting to write the sentence: “Good writing is more than just clear thinking though.” But when I type that, I get hung up. I don’t know what comes next. I think good writing starts with clarifying your thoughts, but the best writing goes beyond that.

I can write something “good” that makes my thoughts clear to me, but if it doesn’t connect with another reader, it doesn’t reach its full potential as a text. There will always be bits of writing that are inherently personal, that don’t want to connect with others. And that can be “good” writing.

Stepping beyond the “good,” into the “better” or “best,” requires broadening one’s thinking to include others. The challenge is empathy.

Right now, I really don’t have empathy. I’m having a frustrating afternoon. I don’t think I’m doing quite enough social activities lately. I need a little more human connection. But, I want to be invited to do something, I don’t want to start it. I don’t want to say, “Hey let’s go do something!” This is so selfish and unrealistic and I’m ashamed of feeling this way.

I’m not happy with this post. It’s all rambly and useless. The point of this was to write things that people could relate to. And this is nonsense. Who am I to think that I can say it better than someone who’s got a quote printed in a paperweight?

This post has gone a direction that I wasn’t expecting. But this blog is about reality and about writing, and so I’m going to leave it like this. I could erase the struck-out text, but that would be putting a false front on. I’m not looking for pity, just realizing some truths about my heart.

Good writing is clear thinking made visible. Thoughts are made clear by the process of writing. Better writing is edited writing. The best writing is something I’m still striving towards. Writing that is clear and edited and honest all at the same time.