A New Story

 

Property of Stormberry

Another post with "that clump of trees". These are actually trees I can see from my office window, from home, and when it's not foggy you can see that they are in a simple plot of land, and there's a road and some small buildings behind. But when the rain and the fog come, it looks like some sort of spooky forest. I guess that's why I like it.

This time around, however, this picture has a particular meaning for me, as today I finally opened a new document and started typing the first line for a new novel. No, I have not published any novel, and no, I have not finished the one I was writing about that friend of mine. Not like that has ever stopped me in the past (I'm fairly capable of writing 100 + pages of a story and then leave the project behind), but this particular story has been rolling around in my head for a while.

I'm kind of "nervous" because I'm setting my story in a time and place I don't know very well, but I really feel called to. I guess I will have to research more about that topic - which is no hardship, as I love that time and place... in a way of speaking (it's little after the Salem witch trials and in that general area, though I make sure not to mention the place), and I plan on taking as many creative licenses as possible (I'll work with made up characters, not any real person from that time), but still. Why is it that people usually expect writers to write about their time and geographical location? No, really, think about it. You her stuff like "write about what you know" and stuff like that. Of course, nobody expects Sci-Fi writers or dystopian writers to do so, but there tends to be a reserve about a writer from X place to write a story located in Z place.

Or maybe I have been around the wrong kind of people.

Not like I would object to several research-trips to Salem, Massachusetts to fully investigate those times, and roam the streets until I know them by heart and locate the exact place of Gallows Hills (Was it Gallows Hills? See? Evidently I need to go to research), but I still have this nag in my head, that I should write about what's connected to me and pretty much evident to anyone. Like that novel about that friend which is so close to reality it will probably be terribly uncomfortable for him (and other people)... even though I make him look soo much better than what he is in real life (and the characters still comes off as a jerk, mind you).

Will I publish? I think the first question is "will I finish it?". And honestly, I don't know. Back when I wrote fanfics, we called these ideas "plotbunnies". They are like these fluffy-tailed, cute little ideas for a story that live in your head and jump around and you can't not think about them. So I write them out, park them somewhere. Then they stop jumping around and eventually fade into oblivion.

We shall see what will happen with this one.

As for the picture, it's the rain and the forest, the first two elements of this story that had ever come to my mind. So that's what I typed, that firts half scene. And so the picture, so I don't forget about this one.