Wild Writer Woman

I don’t fit the popular image of a wild woman. When I’m invited to after-work things, or weekend parties, I don’t go. You’ll never find me stripping on a bar clutching my drink as I drop my clothes. You’ll never hear me drunkenly explaining the intricacies of buttsex to an equally drunken compadre. I’ve never woke up with a hangover to ponder how best to accomplish my Walk of Shame after a one-night stand.

The popular image is a pretty narrow one, really. The idea that only drunk people do silly, wild, unreasonable things? I wish. We all wish, don’t we?

So yeah. Yesterday I signed up for a cabin in Camp NaNo. Today we got our cabin assignments. My friend and fellow Turtleducker Erin is in my cabin, along with Twitter-buddy Annikka Woods, and a couple other awesome people, one of whom I don’t know yet.

The goal is 50,000 words in the month of June. (I’ll decide later if I think August is do-able.) Traditionally one starts NaNo with 0 wordcount, but I joined because I have too many unfinished works, so I’ll be a Rebel breaking the rules. (Lovely thing about NaNo–they don’t mind that. Even encourage certain creative sorts of rule-breaking.)

To Embrace the Beast is my project–yes, the one from the smut challenge. I am now flailing about, trying to sort notes, to remember if I renamed the regent after changing her gender, to figure out if there IS a viable structure when starting with smut. Most novels containing smut don’t come to it in the first chapter, I think.

I meant to get a lot more done before diving into writing. I meant to move to editing next, actually, as I do have lots of things complete that just need editing. However…

Remember that “balance” I’ve been seeking? How am I supposed to get there if I have my life divided into “not-writing so I can do other things” and “WRITING NAO GO AWAY!!” ?

As to the choice of project–here’s the debate that ran in my head as I looked at my original fiction page and wondered at how long it had grown–and how little of that stuff I’ve actually done anything with.

As far as I know, most of my readers are coming from the M/M camp. So far I’ve just put out M/M novels and it does seem like a good move not to potentially alienate my audience with het, but I only have one more Dream’verse novel complete that is M/M. It’s Taro and Rafe, is much fun and introduces Joss, but DEAR AND GLORIOUS LORK IT’S A MESS. And I don’t really feel like working on it anyway–I need a break from the Dream’verse.

So. If we step away from the Dream’verse, but want to stick with M/M for now, Flame is out since she’s a girl. So is Fidelis, since he’s YA with no romance of any sort in sight. Hiro is M/M, but that’s a trilogy with one completed book, one messy outline-slash-first draft, and one I-don’t-even-know-what-the-plot-is-let-alone-have-a-first-draft.

That leaves…well, an option or two, but the one that appeals is Beast. To Embrace the Beast, with smut I love and not much else figured out, but it does have a world I’m dying to explore and more smut I’d really like to write. It’s wanting to be a dark and intricate tale, not at ALL suited to NaNo, but if I fall I fall in flames but I think I’m going to need the impetus of that looming deadline to get it done. Dark and intricate is not my forte, and I think I’m a bit intimidated by the story because of it.

Not to mention it was originally envisioned as a fairy tale retelling, and I don’t know how that’s supposed to work either. I mean, I know that lots of people love fairy tales, but I am not one of them. Therefore I worry that I’ll change the parts people love, and end up falling flat.

But hey. If I enjoy the story, I’ve already won, huh? (I’ll keep telling myself that, even if you don’t agree.) And besides, Neil Gaiman says if I’m scared, I should do it.

So excuse me while I run around flailing, trying to prepare for this madcap adventure. It occurs to me as I ponder the notes I have that I did very little prep-work for this the first time around (possibly why I had to drop it? Hmm…) and I don’t know lots of things I normally would going into a story. Like–I think there’s a queen who is under-aged, and so there’s also a woman who is regent. I think Sammael has a younger brother with some sort of disability, but maybe he’s actually the older brother? I don’t know his name or anything about his health issue, either. I don’t know Remy’s family as well as I did, because I thought of an awesome change I needed to make and the old family structure no longer applies. I think I know Remy and Sammael pretty well, but generally one of my first steps is to figure out what astrology sign fits them (I do NOT go the other way around, and try to cram them into a sign!) and I don’t know that either.

So yeah. Wild Writer Woman on the loose! Lock up your sons and your liquor cabinets, because all that “never” stuff in the first paragraph? Never say never, especially when I’ve got a story to write.