up and decided to put on a Batman costume

[aamcnamara]

127 / 350

So apparently when I go away for three or four days I end up really wanting to work on my novel again.

I was thinking this weekend about how happy I am that I'm working on this novel. For two reasons, really--one is that it's self-indulgent in a lot of ways and that makes me happy. The other reason, though, is that I'm writing An Urban Fantasy Novel. I'm not trying to do anything tricky or elaborate or unexpected. I'm not trying to transcend any genres, and I'm not trying to tell any new stories.

What I am trying to do is get the structure, the cliches, the tropes in right. Since I went to Odyssey I've been having this struggle: here is the story that unrolls out of my head, and here is how my brain is telling me I "ought to write it". How I ought to make it work. Working in "ought"s is rarely easy, and I have been trying to figure out how to balance these things.

I want to play with story structure; I want to do tricky and elaborate things; but to do that I know that I need to understand how to write something that "follows all the rules".

Unfortunately, usually my ideas don't come as things that follow the rules. Fortunately, this one does!

Hopefully revising it will be easier, too--I know what it should look like, so I just have to edit it to be that, whereas with my tricky or complicated ideas, I have to figure out what it should look like before I can even start.

(The other thing I was noticing this weekend is that in some ways, this attempt to write something completely ordinary is deconstructing some tropes, exploring some themes, doing some things that urban fantasy novels don't usually do. So that's kind of neat, too.)

Comments

[csecooney.livejournal.com]

What city does it take place in?
What supernatural creatures are you dealing with?
Hero or heroine protagonist? Are they human? Do they gain powers, or do they move through a magic world, bewildered?

This is very exciting.
I like the word Odyssey. When did you attend?
It was nice to meet you.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

So many questions! I will do my best to answer them.

It takes place in a city Currently Unnamed, which resembles Minneapolis largely because that's the city that I know the best. Right now I am making everything up as I go, because it's easier for me to first-draft that way, but in revisions I will solidify more things. It will probably still be a sort of version of Minneapolis.

The supernatural creatures are fairies, some of which tend toward the like-humans-but-prettier-and-more-mean type and some of which are anthropomorphisations of aspects of the city (and there are some other types, too).

The protagonist is a heroine but she has been cast as The Hero's Best Friend, and both of them are human. He's a Thomas the Rhymer type. They kind of gain powers, but most of it is teeth-gritting and elbow-grease.

...yes. That's a pretty fair description of it, I believe.

I attended Odyssey in 2008 which seems far too long ago now. It was good. I think I learned a lot of things.

It was nice to meet you too! Splendid to put a face to your delightful LJ entries.