What Is It /Really/?

A while back, Dany over at Mythtakes wrote a great post comparing stories to flowers. When we first get an idea for a story, many of us talk about having a 'seed' of an idea - but we forget to take the analogy further. Dany reminded me that, like seeds, often you can be mistaken about what it is that you're actually planting - you might think it's a parsley plant, only to wait a few weeks and find out that it was actually basil. Or you might plant a carrot seed, only to find out it was a potato plant.

Sometimes the surprises can be good; sometimes they can be bad. Even in the short time I've been writing seriously, I've experienced both: The Project gave me a bad surprise when I realised that I really, truly hated the MC and didn't want to write her. TBAEO (To Be An Evil Overlord) gave me a lot of fun surprises along the way.

So here I am, a hair away from finishing Jess - and there are more surprises. Jess isn't the book I thought it was going to be; what book ever is? And as I prepare to head overseas for the month, I'm putting Jess aside in one way - but I'm also mentally preparing myself to mull over an important question while I'm away:

Is the book that Jess has turned out to be the one I want it to be?

Overall, I think that it is. Or will be; there's a lot of editing to do yet.

It started out as a light-hearted, action-y sort of story about a girl who's told she must kill her best friend, but refuses. Instead, she would team up with her friend and they would fight the system together - and win.

Now? Now it's deeper. It's darker - or at least, it has the potential to be. Jess isn't just facing the system that set her up, she's facing all of her old fears - her entire past come back to haunt her. I know that somewhere in this lies the potential for a subtle, chilling, memorable story (which is a nice step from a few weeks ago where I was in despair over the whole thing); I just have to wait for it to bloom. And for me to bloom, so that my writing skills are what they need to be to tell the tale.

And you know what? Waiting's hard. But more on that another day. For now, I need to go start packing ;)

Blog Tour and Pitch Poll

First up, sorry the pitches weren't up when the previous post went up! They're up now.

NB: Sadly, the gadget doesn't allow me to change the colour of the text, and of course, the default colour is BLACK. Oi. I'll have to get my html monkey to play around with things and see if this can be fixed, but in the mean time, you can read them - you just have to highlight them with the mouse to read them o.O

Of course, they're also posted below in the same order they appear in the poll, so you could, for example, note that you like sentence #1 the best and click on the first little circle that appears %-)

These are the first three sentences:

• At her father's funeral the people of the sea and the creatures of the forest both arrive to claim the newly orphaned girl as their own - and neither side is willing to let her get away.
• A no-hoper teenage boy finds an abandoned mine, haunted by the ghost of his baby sister. When his family threatens to incarcerate him if he won't keep quiet, he becomes determined to get to the bottom of the family mystery once and for all.
• Torn from his home the night before his wedding, a young man is thrown into the Labyrinth Tower to be one of four that will lead dead souls to the afterlife.

Vote for your favourite in the sidebar! And a note to all you RSSers out there - consider this your official invitation to delurk!


In other news, I've been on a blog tour! Yippee!

On Sunday, I was over at The Innocent Flower with Michelle.
Monday I was obviously here, discussing the contests! Don't forget, you still have time to enter! :)
On Tuesday I headed across to Liana Brooks' blog.
And Wednesday, today, I've been over at Myth-takes!

Wow, I've been busy :D But lots of fun. Please go check out the articles for the sake of the wonderful women who hosted me - they deserve all the traffic they can get! :D