Tardis no more (#03)

I was going to draw a Tardis in the background but I forgot….

The jacaranda season is here in Sydney. It's a beautiful time of year, when all the suburbs are dotted with a taro milk-tea purple that makes you smile.

How pretty are these!

I had the grand idea that I would post these blog posts weekly, but that didn't happen. Now I feel like I want to post them as they come to me.

I was beginning to get caught up in thinking I needed to "produce" the posts more and that each one should have a thesis of sorts, but that's just way more work for no reason. Calm down.

A few weeks ago, I went to Adelaide for a family wedding. To sum it up, there was a lot of family drama and dancing. I also didn't write for over a week, and that really threw me into a funk when I got back home.

Writing is so much like a muscle in the extreme sense. However, with muscles, you can usually go a couple of weeks without losing much strength progress, but with writing, after just a few days, I lose all endurance. I really struggle just to sit and write for 15 minutes. It takes a few days of consistent writing in a row for me to regain the ability to write several pages without feeling exhausted.

I did buy some cute knick-knacks from Adelaide, though.

I just want to eat them :P

I got these glass lollies from a vintage store in a town called Hahndorf, just outside of Adelaide. I've put them beside my key tray by the door. They are so fun!

Over the past few days, I have gotten back into the swing of things and felt myself return to a state of flow after a long while. I'm working on my character's (Ward's) childhood flashback scene (my current project is called Project Hollow; you can read more about it in my first blog post here). Trying to make the scene interesting, yet poignant in that it reveals a lot about the character's inner wounds and why they are the way they are, plus making the actual writing not suck, has been a challenge. There is a lot I want this scene to achieve, and that's overwhelming at times. It really gets in my head. I need to let that go. I don't want to waste time trying to make it perfect when editing can come later. This is just a first draft, and I need to keep that in mind.

While Ward's childhood flashback is almost finished, I have yet to think of a good flashback scene for Cin. It needs to happen for there to be balance in the book, but I don't know what the contents of that scene are. The fact that I don't have it all plotted out yet is making me a little anxious (to clarify, I have the book plotted out, but I don't have the exact specifics of every scene in detail; I tend to discover these details while I write). Anyway, Cin's flashback scene is not for a while. I have a few other scenes to write first, so I'm hoping that when I get to it, I will have it all worked out—trying to have a Zen attitude about it.

Something else that I have been wrangling with is the tone of the story. I'm writing a fantasy romance, but there is a lot of humour at times, and just really outlandish and strange things that happen. Like a magical coven needing to hire a PR company to fix their image, people getting hexed to drool nonstop for days, and travellers having to go through the supernatural immigration office, etc. Sometimes I stop and think, is this book too childish? This doesn't feel like serious, real fantasy writing.

But then I think about One Piece and Doctor Who, shows that are strange and wacky yet have such depth to them, and I can breathe a little easier. People like to read unusual and weird things. I've got something different here, and I just have to keep going.

I've been wanting to re-watch Doctor Who lately, but it is such a pain to find it on streaming services in Australia right now. They have recently taken the show off ABC. I think the best way would just be to purchase it physically, to be honest. Does anyone else feel like physical media is hot again?

Anyways, until the next one.