Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Happy new year! 2,400 words!

I leaped into my new project this morning, writing at typing speed and not doing much to pretty things up. I don't expect this book to be all that good; I just want the fun of guddling around with cliches.

I've combined the cliches with my Katie Cruel project, and it seems to be working. Originally Katie Cruel was going to be a heavy, dark book about a woman's efforts to find herself, generally by sleeping with unsuitable men. But that in itself is a cliche, and it's not much better than a save-the-world plot. So now the main character is renamed (tentatively) Rose, and the title is now (tentatively) White Rose. How corny is that?

Let's see how many cliches I've hit so far:

1. Rose is different from everyone in her clan--she's a weredeer instead of a wolf or panther, and her fur is white [here I have masterfully combined the eye-catchiness of a white horse and a deer on the prospective cover]. Rose complains that no one understands her because she's different.

2. Rose is about to meet the party who will insist she accompany then to Save the World. The party consists of a bard of mixed ancestry and unknown magical skills, an elf healer woman, a human fighter, and an elf mage of noble birth. Straight out of Diana Wynne Jones's Tough Guide to Fantasyland, honey.

3. I even managed to quietly make this Book 2, because Book 1 would have consisted of the elves and so forth journeying to find the White Doe who has been prophesied to be the one to save the world. Except of course why would I want to write Book 1? Boring.

I'm having a lot of fun so far. It's writing without a net--no outline, no backstory, no nothin'. Why would I need any of that stuff, after all, when this book is going to follow where so many other books have gone before?

I figure this one will be a bestseller.

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