~Generally On Writing~

Well, we haven't gotten the information out of the old iMac yet. It turns out data recovery wasn't enough. Noo. You still have to get some kind of software that lets you access the stuff on an XP. Which, I don't have. And I'm not sure what kind to get, either. :/

I was sick on Sunday and haven't quite gotten better yet, but I'm well enough to read a lot. :) I finished Sandra Scoppettone's "This Dame for Hire" today. Loved it all -- the 40s P.I. stuff, the New York accent, the engaging female heroine, and the mystery.

The one thing I didn't like was the psychic friend. But, that's a personal thing. :)

I had some more ideas about writing my own mystery idea again, but I'll have to mull it over. I read a nonfiction article last night about how you needed to know the ending before you could write a mystery. Well, I hate to write books that way, and that may be one reason I've never been any decent at mystery writing. But, I do have a villain and crime already. It might be worth a try, if I can get a hero I like well enough. (Although for this story, it has to be a heroine. Really, I'd like her to be a mirror of the villain, what she could've been if she'd made different choices. But we'll have to see.)

To be honest, I've never been very good at writing heroines. Even though I'm a girl.

I think I'm actually having a breakthrough there, with another story I'm writing. It's sort of a re-do of a story I wrote before. Except this time I'm changing the premise to, "what if this main character was a female?"

For me, it's rather revolutionary. I'm not worrying too much about plot right now, although I have a general idea.

I've learned one interesting thing so far, and that's that when I'm writing about the girl and from her viewpoint, it's a lot harder to understand the male characters in the story! It's true -- exactly the opposite of when I write stories from male POVs. Mindboggling, neh?

Take, for instance, the aunt of the main character. In the last version of the story I wrote, it was hard for the boy to figure out his aunt. He was a little bit freaked out by her. But, he understood the second-main-character really well. (And so did I.)

Now, I understand the aunt with an almost overwhelming sympathy, and have trouble figuring out the second-main-character (a male). And I've always understood and liked him quite well.

I think I've learned a lot from this story, even if it ends up going nowhere. I just have to keep reminding myself that it's for fun, and not too serious, so that I won't freeze up writing it.

One interesting change is that, while the story was definitely a swashbuckling story before, it is now focusing on more domestic things, like what the townspeople do to survive, and how people get food and make things. At least, that's what I'm finding myself most interested in. And, instead of being brash and wanting to swordfight with the secondary hero, the heroine is more inclined to not act so quickly, and use her brains a lot more. (Not to put too fine of a point on it, but she's got a bit more of them as well.)

I loved the swordfighting elements of the last draft, and still hope I'll be able to get that story back from The Story-Eating-IMac, but for now this story seems honest. The girl doesn't rush into physical conflict, the same as I don't. Why should she?

She's also more concerned with relationship issues, which, I think, is natural, and much easier for me to write than when the genders are reversed. (One is never sure how girly ones guys sound, ya know?)

I do rather hope that I can use this story to work through some guy-girl angst of my own. We'll see how that goes.