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Lana Long just won't leave me alone today. I began National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short. If I say it out loud, it freaks my Wonderful Husband™ because it sounds like a bizarre rare disease) and I took on a story I have had in the back of my mind.
I've been working on this story for a few months, but now the heroine--Lana, who is an ex-hooker--wants me to write about her to the exclusion of anything else in my life.
Now, I don't mean she wants me to finish her story before I write about anything else. I mean, she doesn't want me to take a break for lunch.
Today I actually had some office work for LARA, and I'll have some tomorrow. My writing time is limited if not down to zero for the next two days. But she's pushing me to do the writing anyway. Can I do it? Will she let me eat? Stay tuned and see if I shoot myself before I make 50,000 words on my little widget to the right.
Don't Stop Writing,
Sandra
it's been a while for me. I've been updating the bylaws of my local RWA® and I think they ate my writing brain. Now it's all in the hands of the powers that be, I can think like a writer again.
While flipping channels, I came across a biography of H.G.Wells, with emphasis on the effects of his writings. He did a lot of futuristic tales, though many of them were termed "romance" because anything that was fantastical in nature was considered to be adventure, and, therefore, romantic fiction. Romance meant a love story, but also a tale of adventure, as well.
I started a thread a good many months ago on the Romance Diva's forums, asking what other people thought of when they heard the word fantasy. I was surprised that the thread was still going, and peeked in. As I began to make my answer, I decided to share my opinion with my blog readers, as well.
Personally, I think fantasy is anything that can't be done via science. It has to be. I can't even say that there isn't anything technical in it, because many types of magic have some technicality to it--procedures, tools, perhaps specific clothing or words to be used. But it isn't the same as technology, gadgets or what I call the "MacGyver Factor."
While some peopole say fantasy is on the decline, I think what's really glutted is the fantasy sub-genre of Sword-and-Soceror. Fantasy does not have to have that element to be fantasy.
One of my favorites of all time by George MacDonald is titled Lillith and has elves and pixies and such, but it's a tale of a young man raised in the human world finding his birthright as the son of an elfin woman. He finds his room transformed and a new world that has engulfed it. His travels are amazing, and take only the whole of one night. Not something we'd see now, we don't tell stories in the same way.
Another one, and an older story as well, is H. Rider Strong's novel She, about a man who finds an eternal love as he discovers a hidden tribal society of which this woman had been a priestess.
Since Tolkein and his four book trilogy, fantasy has come to mean something in a Dark Ages type setting with elves, dragons, wizards, warriors, etc. It is the best thing he gave us--a market for stories of the fantastic--and the worst thing he gave us--an idea that this is the only type of story that is a fantasy story.
What a limiting thing this is! You see the influence even in the Harry Potter series--everything in the wizarding world built by J.K. Rowling has an "auld" feel to it. Very nice to set it apart, but also making the world subject to the Sword-And-Sorceror sub-genre. I have to now say, however, my hat is off to Jo Rowling for the balance and the research of the old ways she's put into her novels. Well done, Ms. Rowling.
However, what if you don't write that sort of thing? Classifying where your story fits in is difficult now. Fantasy must have magic. Right? Wrong?
What do you think?
Don't Stop Writing,
Sandra
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