Tuesday, August 10, 2010

By me, for Me

Whenever I stop to try to work out what I want to do with my life (something I'd like to decide before I'm oh, say, 90) I usually end up thinking about writing. Not this kind of writing, I mean novel writing. This isn't to say I don't like the job I'm in, it's just that a) the pay is such that retirement will happen when I'm too old to enjoy it and b) I have to stay - geographically speaking - where I am to do it. Which is something I don't want to do.

As soon as I think about writing, though, all sorts of complications arise. What genre? Mystery, because I love them and read them? But that means either having a protagnist who is a cop or detective or something (which means procedure that I don't know anything about) or having the always-struck-me-as-odd case where a member of the public keeps stumbling across murders.


So then I jump to fantasy novels. Again, it's a genre I read a lot and spend a lot of time thinking about and as an added bonus I have a chapter - and prologue already written. Sadly, it's not the best writing, or even very good writing. They're both from a time when I thought that if I just started something, anything, somehow I would just become a writer. Ha. Stupid, I know, but there you have it. Lots of wishful thinking involved, yes?

Romance usually comes up as a possibility too. I mean, how else can one guarantee the perfect romance? Decide what you wish would happen to your love life and then novelize it. But as soon as I start thinking about that magic and dragons start appearing again and suddenly I'm back in the fantasy genre.

So here's my idea, for anyone who made it this far into the post: what if I just wrote a book for me? Stop thinking about what someone else might read, something that might get published one day. Just write, and when it's done, then think about whether it could be made into something that someone else might read.

Yes, going to school to learn the skill of writing would be a good idea. And if I had any money I'd do just that. But I don't. So I can't.

1 comment:

  1. Agree, write something for you. Novel, novelette. You have all sorts of interesting sources to cull from for ideas, working where you do.

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