December Days 04/07: why I write (kate) &the novels I'm writing (dhampyresa)

[alexseanchai]

Why do I write?

How can I not?

And, like, one of my (potential, because there are many and I'm debating) New Year's goals is to write every day. Because I'm bad at that. And I'm not real good at finishing things, or even getting seriously started on things once I've thought of them, as you will shortly see. But the ideas bounce around my head until I've set them on the screen. The only way to stop them is to write them down.


As for novels I'm writing—and I include novellas and planned-as-novel-length short story collections in this category—well, the list is lengthy. I'm just gonna copy straight from my post on alexconall and add commentary:

A Heart To Let
* Black Velvet Band
* Black Is The Color (Of My True Love's Hair)
* Star of the County Down

Short stories based on traditional Irish folk songs. This may actually be two collections, one cheerful and one less so, in which case the former is A Heart To Let and the latter is The Devil's Own Invention. Irish folk songs are one of my true loves.

"A Song of Angry Fen"

I started this for the geek-girls collection call at Less Than Three Press. I got a ways in and got distracted. It's the story, told through Dreamwidth posts and comments, of a world with magic expressed through creativity, in which someone figured out how to use magic to enforce the USA's ludicrous copyright laws. (Observe: Repetition is a poetic device.) I like political stories, you may notice.

A Storytelling of Crows (with Anne B. Walsh):
* "One for Sorrow, Two for Joy"
* "Five for Silver, Six for Gold"
* "Eight for a Wish, Nine for a Kiss"
* "Thirteen Beware It's the Devil Himself"

This is set in Anne's Legendbreakers world, with lots of involvement from the (sadly fictional) Lancaster Area Renaissance Festival in eastern Pennsylvania. The stories are interconnected and Anne's writing Three/Four, Seven, Ten, and Eleven/Twelve. One/Two is a version of the Snow Queen, Five/Six is Rumpelstiltskin, Eight/Nine is Raggle Taggle Gypsy O (sorry, but that's the title I know the song best as), and Thirteen wraps up the storyline that goes through all eight stories. Anne is one of my favorite people and I love bouncing ideas back and forth with her.

Auld Lang Syne
* East of the Sun and West of the Moon
* The Frog Princess
* The Girl Who Pretended To Be A Boy
* "Stranger than Fiction"

This is the feminist-fairy-tales collection based on the works of Andrew Lang. Which, uh. "The Girl Who Pretended To Be A Boy", which iirc in the Violet Fairy Book? It has a trans protagonist! I mean, he's cissexisted all over throughout the story, but he is definitely trans!

Black Velvet Band Medley

This is the sci-fi one about the prison-industrial complex (notably the Thirteenth Amendment's slavery loophole) and the power of social media, and also Irish folk music again. I keep getting stuck on this one because I can't figure out whether the planet that Sasha et al are shipped off to colonize has people on it already, and that's kind of significant!

Blow That Trumpet Gabriel:
* Leah Far-Sighted
* Rachel and the Gods
* Rebecca at the Well
* Sarah Laughed

Supernatural has such a fabulous premise, but...execution? Not really brilliant from the intersectional feminist perspective. I want to do it BETTER.

Breath of Life

Remember Whodunnit? on ABC a couple summers ago? Yeah, let's make that a fantasy mystery novel with an actual shot at solving whodunnit.

Child's Play
* "Longer than the Way"
* "Dragon Phoenix Match"
* "Clad in Robes of Green"
* "And the Other Sang Low"
* "And She'll Have Her Shirt"
* "Only Love, Only Hate"

Feminist retellings of Child ballads. I forget where I got this idea originally—probably from Tam Lin and Scarborough Fair, which are two of my all-time favorite songs.

Chronicles of Whereverthefuck
* Right Ascension
* Declination

Narnia, like Supernatural, has a fantastic premise, sucky execution. And I used to love Narnia to bits, and still glee at Narnia references. I just...want to do it so it doesn't make my feminist heart cry to read. (No, I haven't named the place yet.)

Church Grimm
* "The Fairest of Them All"
* Rumplestiltskin
* Hansel and Gretel
* The Princess and the Frog
* The Twelve Dancing Princesses
* The Shoemaker and the Elves
* Jorinda and Jorindel

Feminist retellings of Grimm fairy tales. You may notice I like putting feminism into fairy tales that are otherwise kinda short on it.

Clever Hans
* "The Food of Love"
* Thumbelina
* The Snow Queen

Feminist retellings of Hans Christian Andersen stories. Same deal.

"DCLXVI"

There is a reason the title spells out 666. I think this one's mostly f/f/f porn, but of course such is a lovely thing.

Jacobs' Ladder
* "Ceallach An Gannon and the Daughters of Maire"
* Fair, Brown, and Trembling

Feminist retellings of the stories collected by Joseph Jacobs. Though "Ceallach" is really more inspired by "Shee An Gannon" by the CRAIC...fabulous song, check it out on Youtube sometime.

Left Allemande:
* "Right and Left Grand"
* "Chase Right"
* "Explode the Wave"
* "Chain Down the Line" (Trumpetverse)
* "Spin Chain the Gears" (unless it is actually "Spin Chain and Exchange the Gears")
* "Touch a Quarter"
* "Weave the Ring"
* "See Saw"
* "Teacup Chain"

Square-dance-inspired stories! ♥ square dancing. "Chain Down the Line" is essentially casefic from Blow That Trumpet Gabriel; the rest I admit I don't have much more than titles.

The Modern God Almighty

I think this one is getting backburnered, and also I don't want to talk about it much in a public post. WOE IS ME, etc.

"The Poet's Path"

Legend of Cadair Idris, Mark II!

The Shining Ones:
* Abraham's Daughter
* Ave Mary A
* Queen of Song

What if Abraham, of the Book of Genesis, had a daughter? What if she took an active hand in the sacrifice of Isaac, as portrayed in the song "Abraham's Daughter"? How would that change Judaism? How would that set the stage for Mary of Nazareth and Mary of Magdala to change Christianity? How would those changes affect Khadija, Aisha, and Fatima changing Islam? And how would all that play out in the modern day?

Self-Rescuing Princess
* "Shahrazad Retells"
* "The Fairest of Them All"
* Cinderella
* "But Rejoices with the Truth"
* "The Food of Love"
* "Calista and the Wolves"
* "New Lamps For Old"
* Pocahontas
* Ballad of Hua Mulan
* The Princess and the Frog
* "To the Devil and Back"
* The Princess and the Pea
* Twelve Dancing Princesses
* "Zwaanendael"
* Nutcracker
* Aida
* "Shahrazad Retold"

ALL THE DISNEY PRINCESS FAIRY TALES

"Still Visioning the Stars"

This is actually finished in draft—the only thing on the list that is, bar a shorter story or two I already posted to alexconall. I hate it entirely, but that may just be because I know there are things wrong with it (not least, the title) and I hate editing. This is Legend of Cadair Idris, Mark I, though I actually thought of this take on the idea second.

The Temples of Airtanah

This was supposed to be a short story for draft two of my Intro to Queer Studies final portfolio, but in actual practice it wants to be a novel. It's a vaguely Indonesian-inspired setting with an entirely invented dominant religion (which worries me on appropriation grounds) designed to be queer- and trans-friendly and the main conflict is capitalism vs everything else especially the queer- and trans-friendliness.

Urban Elements:
* Dancing in the Moonlight
* Music of the Sun
* The Soft Earth
* Trouble the Waters
* Hold the Wind
* Who Favor Fire

I find it odd that I want to rework Sailor Moon for feminist reasons. I mean, any iteration of canon could stand more racial diversity, and let's not speak of the original English dub of the classic anime, but really you don't otherwise get more feminist than Sailor Moon. But here we are, with apparently six novels in the works that are mostly inspired by Sailor Moon.

Viva La Vida

Vaguely inspired by Yu-Gi-Oh! and lots inspired by the Coldplay song "Viva La Vida", this is the story of a pharaoh who loses her throne, gets an education in how to survive as a poor person, and—because the person who dethroned her is horrid to the people, and even though our ex-pharaoh herself is happy now as she never was before—has to figure out how to retake the throne.

Comments

[davidgillon]

one of my (potential, because there are many and I'm debating) New Year's goals is to write every day

I can definitely recommend it. I got myself doing 3000 words/day all through the summer and it was incredibly productive. It's all gone to hell with the family crisis, but I really want to get back to it.

[dhampyresa]

That's a very long list, but a lot of these don't seem to exist as much more than titles and/or concepts, which isn't exactly what I'd qualify as "writing", but that's just me being pedantic (because I am le tired, probably).

I definitely encourage you to write every day! It's done absolute wonders for my output this year.