Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Of Solarii, Worldbuilding, and Procrastination


(I think that may just be the lamest (or most creative) title I've ever come up with...)
Anyway, I haven't been doing much actual writing lately. I have been doing a lot of planning though (and a lot of procrastinating, unfortunately).

For those of you who are wondering, Of Whispers and Wanderings is still in the editing stages. What with my starting college classes, I haven't had a lot of time to work on it.

However, I haven't completely pushed Of Whispers and Wanderings to the sidelines. I've been planning things out for it. I have an idea for a few new short stories to add to it, so I'm going to start working on those, hopefully today sometime.

I've also been working on other things for this short fiction collection--cover information, acknowledgments, and other details CreateSpace insists on knowing before they do anything at all with the project you want to self-publish.

Anyway, I've also begun planning for two different projects. If I didn't have my hands full before, I certainly do now.

The first project is my fantasy trilogy. I'm sure some of you have heard of it - I've mentioned it several times. I've written three or four drafts of the first book, but was never truly serious about it until now.
Well, I've (finally) started working on planning out the trilogy again. I'm sorting out the important details and plot points so that I hopefully won't write more than two or three more drafts of the first novel.

I have a title sorted out for the trilogy already: The Songs of Old trilogy. I had a title for each of the three books a while ago, but a few changes I made to the plot turned it all around. So now I have to come up with new titles. Oh well; it's no big deal. I think actually writing the books is more important at the moment.

I haven't only been making changes to the plot; I've also been discovering information and details of Solarii.

See, I pushed Solarii to the back of my mind a couple of months ago. Actually... I pushed pretty much all of my writing to the back of my mind. I was dealing with a lot of stuff and starting college, so I decided I didn't want to write.

I didn't notice anything at first, but after a month, I realized - I was really missing my writing. Even if I didn't write anything constructive, at least I was writing; using my imagination and exploring possibilities.

So I decided that this year, I would plan out my fantasy trilogy and write the first draft of the first book.

Lately, my mom has been doing a lot of yardwork. This is the perfect time for me to puzzle out things about Solarii. So whenever she tells me to come outside and help with the yardwork, I turn on my CD player and start thinking about Solarii. Nothing in particular; just the world itself. I let my mind wander and see where it takes me.

An aspect that I've been pondering a lot lately is the cultures of the races in Solarii. You know, the kinds of laws they have, their traditions, and things like that.

Now, this is where my next idea for a project comes in (if you recall, earlier I mentioned having begun planning for two new projects).

During a point in time when I was extremely bored, I was commenting to myself about how I should worldbuild on Solarii more often. At the same time, I was also berating myself for not working on short stories. I need to write a few short stories from a female's point of view, because - though completely unintentional - almost all of my short stories (and longer works, for that matter) feature a male as the main character.

Well, this matter of the worldbuilding and the short stories clashed, and I had an idea: why not write a bunch of short myths, fables, and other such things from different cultures in my Solarii? If I did that, not only would I be writing short fiction like I need to, but I will also be learning more about the culture and history of the cultures of Solarii - which is a form of worldbuilding.

And that was how the idea of writing a collection of events, myths, etc. from the five races of Solarii (men, Elves, Dwarves, Faeries, and Lycans [oh, did I say? I may be changing the name of the Lycans to something else; more on that sometime soon]) came about. So I hope to work on that throughout this year and the next, and hopefully have a good collection done by May of next year.

So, that's another project I have. Let me think how many I have now - I want to write the first draft of the first book in my fantasy trilogy... write that pirate novella... self-publish Of Whispers and Wanderings... and write this collection of Solarii's mythology.

Yeah, I've got my hands full for the next year and a half. I think it's time for me to stop procrastinating and actually work on this stuff.

And that's what's been going on with me lately, writing-wise.

2 comments:

  1. ^_^ Oooh, lots of exciting things!

    I like 'The Songs of Old' as the name of your (going to be written)trilogy! Very nice.

    ~ZA

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