Cluttered Thoughts

Work progresses on the novel, albeit slowly. More and more, I find my mind wandering, find myself thinking of other stories I'd like to tell. I'm not quite sure how to feel about this, to be honest. In one sense, I feel anxious because I would hate to burn out on this project, not now, not after 94,000 words. On the other hand, maybe that signals that I'm getting close to the end this time, that the initial writing phase is nearing completion and my mind is already moving head, wondering what the next project will be. I think I'd like that, actually, because it would mean I could start on the editing process for the current story, which would place me that much closer to sharing it with other people... and maybe even publishing it.

For a long time now, I've wanted to tell a story about dragons. At various times, I've made a few attempts. In particular, I can recall one ambitious epic I'd outlined and written the first chapter for, about this crazy world of magic and technology, and a zombie plague, and dragon hunters, and how a dragon would save the world. I can't remember what I was going to call it. All I know is that I thought and thought and thought about the story, but never got it going, never got it off the ground. In hindsight, I think that it was probably a good thing that I never tried to write that story, because dragons don't lend themselves well to being main characters in your typical fantasy epic (or even your atypical fantasy/sci-fi amalgam) since, you know, they can fly 'n stuff. Flight is one of those things that pretty much destroys any sort of "journey story" since you can just skip right over to the finale. Consider how much shorter the Lord of the Rings would have been if they'd just ridden an eagle to Mount Doom. (Yes, I know that there are story reasons for why they didn't do that but that's not my point here).

There are a lot of reasons why I want to tell a dragon story, and yet, there are reasons why I'm afraid to try. I think it means confronting and trying to explain why they matter to me, why I've taken something so prevalent and iconic in fantasy and mythology and made some sort of personal claim to it, adopted it as a symbol of sorts for myself. I worry that maybe I'm too close, maybe I'm too attached, that maybe the fact that I love dragons, the idea of them, all of that... maybe it means I won't be able to write the kind of story I want to write. Maybe I'm embarrassed to try, because it means opening up that part of myself to an audience that may embrace, dismiss, or worse, openly denigrate in response.

And yet, maybe that same attachment is why I know that I should try. Because this is something that's part of me, part of my mind, for better or for worse, and part of me needs to know if I can do it, if I can capture the experience as I know it and translate those feelings into language.

It's far too early to think about what the next story should be. For one thing, I need to devote a significant portion of my creative energy to coming up with my short story for my writing class, since, you know, it's due by March 8th and will be reviewed by all of my peers and my professor. Not that I'm nervous about that or anything. Okay, I lied. I'm totally nervous.

I do have the idea for that story in mind, and it's very likely that, even before I finish "Fallen" I'll pause my work on that to dedicate my nightly writing sessions to writing that story. So, honestly, all this talk about what comes next after "Fallen" is quite premature, and really, the only reason I'm blogging about it is because it's what's on my mind right now and the entire purpose of this space is for me to voice my thoughts, mostly so they don't remain all cluttered in my brain.

Anyway, there's a lot to do, and quite a few things that are dominating my very immediate future, including that short story and some essays and the fact that I'm moving this weekend and... yeah, so you might say I've still got a lot on my mind.