More Thud

[leahbobet]

July 19, 2006 Progress Notes:

Wedding Dress (working title)

Words today: 400.
Words total: 950.
Reason for stopping: I need to figure out why all sailors go to hell. I just realized they never told me.
Tea: Just water.
Munchies: Butter chicken and couscous.
Darling du Jour: "I'm a bad man," he whispered into her hair, his hands at her waist, his lips on her cheek, her throat, her collarbone. "I'll go to hell when I die."
"All sailors go to hell," she whispered, hoarse, and pulled him into her bed.

Tyop du Jour: N/A
Words MS Word Doesn't Know: unchaperoned
Mean Things: That the sailors go to hell, sati, the myopia of history, lots of dead stolen wives.
Books in progress: Tobias S. Buckell, Crystal Rain; Iain M. Banks, The Algebraist; Sarah Monette, The Virtu
The glamour: Went to a movie with cszego, dolphin__girl, and ksumnersmith. We had a Cinnabon before it started.

---

It's amazing how sometimes I'll start something, run out of plot, and tuck it away on my hard drive. And then months or years later open it up and wham!, the whole story just floods in. And it's a different story than it used to be.

I started this back in January, I think. It'll be a better story now.

The other funny/amazing thing is how I seem to be...pushing out into the same worlds, just farther. "The Googleable Man" is a prequel for "Lagtime", in this month's On Spec; "The Earthly Ascension of Ducky Cheung" is a sequel to both. This one here is a sorta-sequel to "Sonnets Made of Wood". "Lost Wax" (upcoming in Realms of Fantasy sometime soonish) is the same world as "The Sorceress's Assistant" and "Rosemary, For Rememberance". I'm roughing out two more ideas that are in the same place as "Kimberley Ann Duray Is Not Afraid".

I've never really done shared-world before. It's usually...one story, one cosmology, moving right along.

Do you revisit the same place a lot? Did you do it all along, or did you just start one day?

Comments

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Pedantic note: "Shared-world" is mostly used for worlds in which more writers than one set stories.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I'd have been more concerned about that if I hadn't explained exactly what I meant in the paragraph just above, but thanks for pointing it out. :)

So...are you a one-story-per-world kinda guy or several in the same?

[phantom_wolfboy]

I need to figure out why all sailors go to hell. I just realized they never told me.

"Rum, sodomy, and the lash."

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Hee. No, in this world it's even the mostly nice ones. It has something to do with the Sea-God's ideas of what's appropriate behaviour, but I never found out what.

[wistling.livejournal.com]

I think "same-world" is more appropriate than "shared-world". I do a lot of those. Out of 17 short stories I've written, 5 are set in Mercuria, 2 are related stories in Ancient Greece (and 1 also in Ancient Greece but not as tightly connected with the other two).

Other stories that have series potential are "Metamorphoses in Amber" (Elect universe), "Stilts and Straw" (sword-and-sorcery), and "He Immortal, Evergreen She" (the Tangent reviewer practically dared me to write more).

I've tried to get a shared-world going - me and 3 of my writer friends have written unpublished urban fantasy stories set at Rook's University, on the Toronto Islands (if the Island Airport had never been built). I keep trying to get them to polish up the stories and send them out, but so far only my story has a good chance of being published (the rewrite's at Tales of the Unanticipated). Lots of room in the sandbox, so holler if you want to try a shared-world project.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Did you always have things working in loose series, or did you start doing it at one point out of nowhere?

[wistling.livejournal.com]

For my 2 Greek stories, they used to be one long story, but they seemed to work well as 2 separate pieces.

Most of the other same-world pieces came out of worldbuilding - there's always some aspect that was interesting but didn't fit anywhere. So I guess I always allow for the possibility of additional stories.

One of my stories is pretty much self-contained, because it was an end of the world story (well, even then there could be a sequel).

[mekkavandexter.livejournal.com]

i have never done shared-world stories up until this year --- I have 2 pieces in my near SF dystopian world (Bedroom in Arles and Failing the Rorschach Test), and really kind of want to write 1 more, but I think that would be it. Writing a gazillion requires too much worldbuilding -- then you might as well just write a novel ;)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

then you might as well just write a novel ;)

Heh -- that's the suspicion I'm sneaking up on right now. That I've found a way to write a novel without actually doing the hard and icky bits of writing a novel, and with lots of immediate gratification for finishing stories... *g*

[mekkavandexter.livejournal.com]

hee, that's why i haven't written a novel about the Revelationists ;) damn that worldbuilding!

[cathemery.livejournal.com]

OK, so, are they stolen before they die or after?

::enquiring minds want to know::

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Oh, after. If that counts, really, because the sea's trying to kill them all the time anyway. :P

[cathemery.livejournal.com]

oh my!

Fascinating. :)

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

All but two of my short stories are in the same world. "Winter Coats" might be historical in the "Snake Charmer" world, or it might be something totally different. I have the Mythosverse, the Snake Charmer world, and world from TDC, and maybe a couple different places if I count flash, but I don't know much about those yet.

hello and...

[mountainlaurel.livejournal.com]

I rather enjoyed the "Darling du jour" today. Now you have me VERY curious.

Re: hello and...

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Hi! And thank you! :)

I will satisfy your curiosity as soon as, erm, I figure out why the sailors go to hell... *g*