Pondering.

[shadesong]

So I read mouseferatu's post on writing fiction, and I got to thinking about how my writing fits into my life.

Everyone writes differently, of course. For me.... Shayara is my One Big Story, the one I've known bits of since before puberty, the one whose characters have been in my head for a decade and a half. It spans thousands of years, this story, and it fills me up. And even though I'm only giving you the highlights - just three stories, out of all of the possible stories - those stories span a decade.

This takes up most of my creative energy.

I specifically have a job that doesn't involve my creative energies at all, because I feel the need to reserve that part of myself for Shayara. Also, there are incidental side stories involving Shayara that will be told alongside the main stories. Lot of stuff there.

It's my One Big Story. I have other stories, but they're short stories... things that come out in one of two sittings, things with a neat beginning, middle, and end. Particularly the mainstream stories. The mainstream stuff will never be any more than short stories, as I have no interst in sustaining a non-genre narrative - those characters don't speak to me enough. With characters like Julia and Kat and Kieran, it's about their *lives* - with the mainstream characters, it's more about what happened last month, nothing else.

There may be other Big Stories in me. I may find some when I finish Shayara, if Shayara's ever really finished. I don't know.

For those of you who write: what do you write? Why? And how does that fit into your daily life, your day job?

Those of you who don't: Where do your creative energies go? mousegrrl and mister_wolf, I want to hear about art. :) The rest of you? What do you do? If you're not doing anything - what do you *want* to be doing?

Comments

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

You *have* told me your Theory, but you should post it anyway - it's a good Theory.