Everyone has subjects that get them going :-D
I can write 10.000 words on the subject of Israel-Palestine in one sitting without breaking in sweat :-D
I'm laughing, because this is one subject that really gets me going, and I speak and speak and speak, and no-one listens... it's just too controversial, too flammable, too explosive and everyone has their mind made up, set in stone, so it's no use to say anything. A totally useless subject. But... it could be used to something else. I could create a fantasy world with the situation, and follow two persons, one from both sides, and write The Fox and The Hound or Romeo and Juliet - or both - placed in the situation.
I have also other pet peeves, like Christianity and its quest of world domination. Another subject I can easily write and write and write about. That too could be turned into a novel, because all quests of world domination are the same; fascist, chauvinist and xenophobic in nature.
Every now and then I see someone, hear something, read something, that makes me yearn...
It is too late for me to have a life as a pilot, but it's never too late to WRITE the life of a pilot.
It will not happen that I would become a new Oprah, but I can write about the new Oprah.
I won't be climbing Mount Everest, but I can make my character do that - and everything.
(Well... just follow Helena on her journey in (on? to? I don't know. Choose the correct preposition, please, because I can't :-D) becoming Layla...)
I love horses, so I created a fantasy world build around equine worship. The world is matriarchaic and the empress of the place was (is) a "Mary Sue", named and shaped after Jadis of Charn ;-) (She's not evil, though, and not interested in world domination.) The world has a sort of Bene Gesserit priestess system, with a scent of temple prostitutes (they are called "every man's wives", but not in sexual sense, but in the companionship, listener, comforter sense. They do sex too, if necessary, but usually it isn't.), and a soldier caste called Annas. (I am passionate about martial arts and swords.) It is a Medieval world, because I'm a medievalist, thanks to Tolkien :-D
I love self-sufficiency, frugality and such; and I love late Victorian times, so I started writing a Pagan version of Little Women, blending it with one of my favorite books, Farmer Boy, and adding a bit of Katy by Susan Coolidge and a little of Edith Nesbit ;-)
You get the idea? Take your pet peeves, day dreams and fantasies, and translate them into novels.
In Angela Booth's 100 day writing challenge, we were asked to write a list of our assets, and I wrote and wrote and wrote... everything I am, everything I'm good at, everything I'm interested in, everything I'm afraid of, every problem I have, everything is an asset.
If I have a phobia, I understand how phobia works, and can write about any phobia.
The writers are told to write about what they know, and that is who I am. This is one reason why I decided to write my NaNo this year about a witch.
It's not fantasy. (Or, sort of it is... slightly mystical thriller/adventure, like Katherine Neville's The Eight, Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian or Kate Mosse's Labyrinth.)
In it the main character is a witch, having a "witch shop" - a shop I'd like to have, if I didn't have social phobia. She sells books on witchcraft, occult and mystery, New Age and Pagan religions. She sells jewelry, clothes and artefacts, divinatory tools, incents and spell kits and such things. She sells things both new and used. She makes a lot of her things herself, and here too I'm building on myself. Once a month she doesn't sell anything, but receives customers for reading.
Like most modern witches, she is Wiccan and has her weekly meetings with the coven she's a member of, and like most modern witches, she doesn't really believe in all the stuff... sure, she believes in reincarnation and that there is more to the world than one can see, but she doesn't really believe in magic and fairies. She thinks it's mostly just a question of attitude and positive thinking and power of mind, symbols and projections and such.
One day the trouble walks into her store in the shape of a woman selling her an old piece of jewelry, an amber heart in gold filigree cage, in long chain...
This is basically how long I have come. I have some problems here, because she is a witch and has been working with the "stuff" for years, so she would sense the necklace is cursed or haunted or something, so she wouldn't buy it... Perhaps the woman selling the necklace explains the bad vibrations by telling a story that she got the heart from her husband who has been cheating on her, so she hates it now... Or perhaps it wasn't the witch buying the piece of jewelry, but a stand-in... perhaps the witch needed to see a doctor or something, and had a friend keep the shop open for her.
Anyway, if you like to connect with me at NaNoWriMo, I'm Ketutar, and I'd love to be your writing buddy :-D
2 comments:
Oh, this is a great way to think about all the potential material out there. It really opens the doors, doesn't it?
As to your Witch... there is a mystery you might like... it is 'almost cozy' but a little sassier and darker, but the MC (a female bakery owner) has a good friend who is a witch and runs just such a shop. It's called Earthly Delights by Australian Kerry Greenwood (this was the book that inspired my idea for the Microbrewery mystery series)
Kerry Greenwood sounds interesting :-)
Thanks for another good tip :-D
And, yes, it does :-D I read about a French author who said that it's cheaper to write books than go to therapy :-D
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