Geek. Pirate. Mom

Sometimes writing isn’t about what you write.

That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Of course writing is about writing. It should be so easy. You sit down and then… squirrel!

If you’ve seen UP and remember Dug, that’s pretty much what being a writer can be like. I’ll sit down to write and then, suddenly think of emails I haven’t returned. Or realize I haven’t checked Twitter in a half hour. Or decide to make myself a somewhat time consuming meal.

I’m very good when it comes to procrastinating. I’ll sit down and think of a hundred things that I’d much rather be doing, and then do them. Or a show I haven’t seen, and in the interest of emptying my DVR, watch. (With the necessary distractions I have, I’ve managed to forget that I was writing this several times, in fact. 8 to be precise.)

So for now, it’s about writing whatever I can. Whether it’s a tweet, a blog post, or some bit of fiction that I don’t think anyone would care about. That’s why writing isn’t entirely about the content, just about writing.

So what have I written this week in lieu of my still unnamed Adventure Serial Project? I have written 5 blog posts (two of which were deleted), including this one. I wrote twenty-eight pages of a revised draft that I doubt anyone will ever see- unless you really want to.

You see, once upon a time, I ran a Star Wars role-playing game online (along with my best friend). It ran for years and I have some of the transcripts. Sadly, it ended with a couple adventures in progress. Which means, those characters are still active in my mind. When I sit down to write, I usually spend 15-20 minutes placating them, so that I can move on to what I would prefer to work on.

I was in the middle of my daily exorcism, when I realized that everyone’s dialogue was much too long. Much too flowery. I’d been watching Sense and Sensibility and had just finished reading Mansfield Park. Looking at the dialogue, it was as though Jane Austen had been writing Star Wars.

On a whim, I snagged a transcript and rewrote it as a mashup- Regency dialogue and some societal conceits mixed in with the game. It was surprisingly easy, and the rewrite just flowed out of me. Granted, I wasn’t changing much- but even for revising a draft, that was a lot of work to do in one day.

So nothing new on Project X, sadly. Except a bit of a confession about the detours I take. Next week I promise to have something of substance- deciding what types of characters I need.

For whatever reason, I love picking projects that require a lot of research. One is set in so many time periods that I might as well get a degree in history.

So this is my break from that. Since it’s an action/adventure serial similar to Indiana Jones and the Mummy (and all the wonderful novels and radio show that inspired movies like those), I get to play a little fast and loose with history.

It’s the same way that movies like “Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl” succeed. They give you just enough indication of the time period that it seems like it could be realistic without making it a true historical piece. Contrast the first Pirates movie with the third. In the first, it was established that pirates were hunted and the penalty was death. It was established that some groups branded pirates. However, it was just enough to establish some of the stakes that the pirates faced, but didn’t focus on them. It focused solely on the treasure and the Black Pearl. The third movie, on the other hand, became bogged down by details. While there were elements of the fantastic- Davy Jones and Calypso, the majority of the plot was about pirates being squeezed off the seas, trade agreements controlling governments. The series went from being a supernatural movie set in a historical time period to a period piece with supernatural elements. One was successful, the other… not so much. (And for the record, I did love the third one, but I’m a history nut. I don’t think it was as well written as the first.)

This story has a couple things that are tricky. There’s my MacGuffin, which is rooted in a historical time period (go artifacts!). So I have to make it fit without giving so many details that it seems fake- since too many details makes me feel like someone thinks I won’t believe it otherwise. Then there’s the timeline that the story is set in.

I want the location to feel believable, but at the same time, I’m not writing a travelogue.

Things I’m researching:

Alexander the Great
Nazis
South East Asia in the 1930s

The picture for this post is of Amice Mary Calverley, who I discovered while looking for inspiration in pictures from the 1930s. If it weren’t for real women like her, fictional characters from Marian Ravenwood to Evelyn O’Connell (nee Carnahan) wouldn’t have been plausible. I’d never heard of her until this week, but honestly- what an amazing woman!

So this week I’ve been working on characters. Names, rough backgrounds, personalities. But I’m not going to share that yet. Sorry. But you know, there’s a lot of other stuff that I’ve worked on already that I thought needed documentation.

Inspiration comes from a lot of places for me. For the projects that I have notebooks for (and there are several) I have been inspired by television programs, dreams, movies, and even collaborations that fell through.

But this project? This one takes the cake. My inspiration came from a character that I’d worked up for a performance. And not just any performance… an ongoing performance that I did 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for almost 3 years. Read More…

I suppose I should explain. I have strange dreams. Dreams that not many people I know have- the elusive narrative dream. Not the Alice in Wonderland sort, where things are surreal. But quite frequently, the sort where it feels like it should be a TV or movie, where things are just logical enough to make sense, but odd enough that I know it’s a dream.

For your consideration, last night’s dream. Read More…