Friday, September 5, 2008

Trying New Things

It's important for a writer to try new things. This means experiences--I never could have set my most recent work in Malta, for example, if I'd never been there (I hadn't known it existed before the trip!). But this also means writing new things, too.

I'll admit, for a girl in a creative profession, I've got a hard time coming out of my writing box. You know old people who talk about walking uphill (both ways) through the snow to get to the one-room school house and they actually seem to miss those good ol' days? Yeah, I'm like that. YA fantasy is the only genre worth my time. I shudder at the thought of writing in first person POV. I get physically sick thinking about extensive outlining. Don't even get me started on present tense. I write my third-person fantasies with the smallest amount of outlining in imperfect tense, thankyouverymuch.

But.

This novel I'm about to start, the one just makes my little spawns of mind juice just squee! with delight...yeah, it's not fantasy. It's sci fi. And it's going to be told not only from a first person POV...but from two alternating first person POVs. And it's going to be a murder mystery set in space with a twist out of this world (get it? get it?), and I've begun chapter by chapter outlining. With much detail.

And that rut I hit somewhere about the last third of my last work, that dragging feeling I'd slowly started to develop for the past few months in writing...it's lifting. I'm getting all tingly and excited thinking about this new book...and all those writing styles I've never tried before are adding goosebumps to my goosebumps.

But I'm not touching present tense. Let's not get too wild here :)

3 comments:

PJ Hoover said...

I'm so excited to hear more about it! It sounds fabulous! Love first person. And yeah, present tense takes a bit of an adjustment.

Unknown said...

:) However, I am starting to be swayed into believing it's pretty cool after all.

Kayla Olson said...

I love that the ARC on my table began with this post.