I think I am dodging a particular novel. To be clearer: I am.
Yesterday I restarted work on a modern novel that I am struggling to find the narrative thread for. I have a banger idea and some solid side character concepts. I even have the thread of a protagonist–though I remain uncertain about writing a female protagonist though I truly feel like this is her story. I got a good amount of outlining and reconnecting in. Then, as I was cleaning the office and putting away old work, I stumbled on an unfinished novella and instantly decided to finish that instead. The novella is Shadowrun based and as such familiar and easy. It is the novel equivalent of low-hanging fruit given how far along it is and how well I understand the scenario and the motivations. Everything I do not know about the modern story, I know about the Shadowrun novella. So, I convinced myself in principle that it makes more sense to finish the SR story and have that ready to push out to publication than it does to tackle this other story I’ve been dodging for 5 years.
I am a punk. There, I said it. I am running from the story I don’t know how to write because I am afraid of failing at it when I know it can and should be so very very good. This is movie rights type stuff and I am selling the entire bag. Fear, then, is the focus of this ten minute post. I don’t wish to sound preachy, but I personally realize what fear can do to a writer. I am watching it happen in real time. I am watching it hold me back from what could be the start of a new path of writing for myself. What is it I am afraid of? Well, I am presently reading Seveneyes by Neal Stephenson, and it is loaded with incredible science, ideas, and world building. Yet, he entirely bungled the character story. He’s writing women –largely as the POV characters– that I cannot accept as being anything more as an insult to women on a psycho-sexual level. The narrative thread is more milieu than character story, which is probably the point, but so far from what I want to do and so much exactly what I am afraid of doing to my own work. All of that fear pushing me back from the keyboard makes me a punk.
I think a lot of writers are punks. We get scared to do different things and lock into doing what we are good at. If you want to be more than genre. If you want to tell relevant stories, you need to embrace that fear and keep going. I’m going to do that.
Right after I knock out this novella.