Writing Woe's: What we normally call 'Writer's Block''

Writing is one of those funny hobbies... because you love doing it (you kind of have to. It's not that rewarding) but you make every possible excuse not to.

I need to clean the house first

I need to do a little more research first

I should plot out the entire book first

It always seems to come up that there's something you ought to be doing first. Either that or you're not in the mood, everything you write is coming out awful, you're sick, you have a headache, it's too noisy in here! When do the list of excuses end?

Well, they don't really. Because being a writer is about imagination so of course we can imagine all sorts of reasons not to be doing that thing that we love to do... And there seems to be no reason for it!

I'm the worst at this. Right now I'm sitting here with this marvelous headache and two animals that just won't settle down. I've written all of 600 words all day and it's already 6pm. Day wasted it feels.

And if you're waiting for the part where I philosophically turn this all around you're going to be disappointed. Because I'm just complaining. It's another in a long line of imaginative things I do not to write. I think I enjoy complaining.

But, no, I just realized I hadn't updated my blog in quite a few days and I'm determined to keep up on at least one project. It's a bad habit of mine to start something and then drop it. Constantly quoting that excuse of "I don't feel like it" or "I'm not inspired" or "I'd rather do this instead anyways..." So it's really good for me to push myself when it feels like the steam has turned off.

Plus I want to keep myself honest about my WIP. Maybe if I talk about it a little bit somewhere, I'll keep up on it. I've been playing with this idea for over a year now. Keep sort of starting it and then changing an idea here or there... and starting over. And all this time it had been meant to be the immortal empath's (Leona's) story.

After all... she was my character. I created her. Or she came to me and I started writing her... It's sometimes hard to tell. And I absolutely love her, probably because she's a lot like me in many ways. She's my alter ego so to speak.

But her counter part, Remi, has become the easiest to write. And 'they' usually say that if they're easier to write, they're probably meant to be the main character.

So I've rather accepted this turn around. It just seems interesting because I love Leona and I think she's a fascinating character... and she's mine... but there's something rather difficult in writing her. Or, more importantly, in trying to plan and write a novel around her. I guess in a way she's too complex and has too many factors that get introduced too early on, it feels forced.

Remi wasn't my character.

He was based off an interpretation of another character. And in that way at first he was rather forced as well. He was mostly there because I needed him to be there for the plot... But where was the fun in that?

Plus he felt too copied. Too much like the original. And as much as I don't mind the comparisons to the original or people to see the parallels in their stories, I wanted him to be mine. So I refused to write anything until I had him figured out.

I'm still not quite sure where it came from, what made me able to flip everything around and make him a background and personality that matched the original character but was almost entirely mine as well... But it happened. And I'm quite proud of it.

I just wish I could write more for my novel in a day than I could for my blog -sigh-

Tarot Day: The Star

WIP:

A three hundred year old empath meets a tarot reading thief with unusual eyes who's past transgressions he'd rather keep secret might be the key to stopping a virus meant to cause genocide on a global scale.

That's just the basic tagline. There's a lot more to it but at the moment I'm working on brushing up on my Tarot card knowledge because the thief, Remi, relies on them a lot. And I have fun bringing them up into scenes for irony or foreshadowing.

Part of the fun has been sort of designing my own decks. I have a basic deck that Remi uses most of the time and then I have a more complicated 'Dragon Deck.' The Dragon Deck Remi finds bits and pieces of on his journeys.

The first one Remi finds and which happens to have the most to do with the first book is the Star Card

In Remi's basic deck it looks pretty much like my crude paint drawing above. Just a simple silver diamond with some light and the name at the bottom.

Anybody familiar with a Tarot deck, though, knows that usually The Star is represented by a woman, usually nude, standing by a pond. Often times with a pitcher of water in her hands.

The basic interpretation of The Star, being an Aquarius ruled sign, is that there is something in the future to look to. Whatever it is that you're searching for in need of (love, career, etc) is out there but it will take some time to reach there. There is no promise of you actually achieving the end, things change and new directions are often taken. But it is a card of implied hope.

So for the Dragon Deck the ancient language translates into 'Angel of Hope.' A beautiful nude angel with green eyes hovers over a surface of water, holding a ball of light in her hands.

This is a card that crops up often for Remi in his Tarot reading and he often times has it joked that it's really saying there's some lucky lady out there in his future. And while that is, in fact, literally true, it's also because Remi comes from a rather rough background. He was an orphan, a street rat and a pick pocket, he was adopted into some rough politics and even after all of that there's still more terrible stuff I won't go over.

Basically this is a boy and a man that really feels like this is lot in life. He kind of wears this attitude of "Oh, well the universe is kicking me while I'm down? Why not? Everybody else is!" But he's still a fighter and a survivor. Being a believer in the cards, he does think eventually he'll reach a spot in his life where he won't have to look over his shoulder anymore.

And yes, that might actually include some pretty woman for him to fall for and all that.

Vito Campanella (C)

On the reverse side, I found some cool details about if the card comes up upside down. Now some people shuffle the deck so this isn't possible or simply ignore if it the card does come out upside down. But some people like looking into the means of that.

There were several ways to look into it but my favorite was to literally take it as upside down. The water leaves the pool and the light of the star is no longer in the sky, leaving everything dark. It is not that the star is obscured, but absolute lacking of hope. This is a person in a very desperate situation who is being offered no help.

Which might seem like it would fit Remi in his life of ups and downs and many desperate situations.

But really is fits with the love interest, Leona, very well. As her whole life is turned upside down and she loses everything: her home, family, and way of life. She barely has anything to cling on to and needs help.

The only one there capable of offering it to her is Remi, but he's so untrusting that at first he refuses.

It's only when he gets over his issues and holds out a hand that his upside down Star card can be lit up with light and hope again.