Bloody hell (a post about writing)

So .... the folder containing Rites of Exorcism stuff contains the current finished first drat (70K, nanowrimo of this year). I'm 20K into the sequel. The rest of the folders within it contain another 151,768 words. Various novel drafts, setting notes, character notes, write-ups on creatures, other attempts at the setting and so forth.

This is damn depressing on a number of levels :p

The worst part is that I have one other novel that, in various iterations totals 201,227 words. The actual novel that resulted from all that -- Monsters & Miracles -- was 67,000 of those words and is entirely impossible  to compare to the first draft of the story, which is kind of cool in its own way. Almost nothing from the first drafts survived at all, which is at least proof of a kind of progress even if it, too, can be seen as depressing.

I also have a trilogy in progress whose accumulated word count is 137,000 words which seems reasonable enough as it includes one finished draft of the first novel, 4K of the second novel, partial revised draft of the first and notes for the entire series.

(For the curious few, Boy & Fox is over 80K, not including 50+ handwritten pages I've yet to type up. Which isn't surprising given there are entire chapters of the first draft that no one else ever saw. It was very strange to be submitting a story to a writing group and editing entire chapters of the future story out of it in the process, which is one clue why it stalled so very badly.)

OTOH, the accumulated word count of some of the projects in some way forces a finished draft, as it did with M&M and has in many ways with the Rites series. I tend to be the sort of writer who leaps from idea to idea and concept to concept, seldom bothering to ever really go back and edit/revise novels since the new is always luring me on. However, thanks(?) to the writing group I tend to stop novels mid-stride, revise it as a new draft and what emerges at the end of an absurdly large word count is at least a more functional finished first draft.

Or so I am telling myself right now :)

On using vampires

As a rule, I've never used vampires. Oh, creatures called that and mistaken for it, yes -- I have one novel series of sorts based around voodoo, Sumerian mythology and entities that became the basis of the vampire and were-creature myths.  I figure if you're going to have a world with supernatural things, having something as basis for some of the myths makes sense. The problem I have is that of horror: vampires aren't scary anymore. They haven't been for some time.

All monsters tend to be a reflection of the era they're in, echoes and statements about man and humanity. But it's harder to have a dark mirror when what we as humans do is generally plenty dark enough. So vampires -- like angels -- mutated into something closer to superheroes, to beings with powers and Kewl Stuff that, in the case of vampires, they had to not want. So, angst. Because living forever and never seeing the sun again is such a burden that vampires could never find it awesome or decide to fight crime or at least get a life. Or unlife.

As a side note, I have this theory that the transformation to a werewolf can easily be bracketed onto being a teenager: it would be interesting to take vampire and fit it into mid-life crisis, say. Stories about vampires endure because they are flexible in this manner: we choose what kind of story we tell with them, we shape the myth to fit the story that gets told. And not all stories with vampires in them are about vampires at all. (It is hard to write about vampires these days and not include a Twilight reference. This was that.)

In my case, I wanted to do horror. I have the setting, the idea of the vampire fits it. In this case, the vampire is a stand-in for a viral plague at the level of metaphor. But that doesn't stop the vampires from believing they are vampires or, in some cases, becoming movie/novel kinds of vampires thanks to using magic that comes with no instruction manual at all. I have posited the vampires as the origin of the black death and had one character claim a single vampire could exterminate the planet of human life in about 2 months. Whether this will be enough, in terms of narrative or craft, will be an exercise for the beta readers to hash over.

WIP fun

Oh, that was sad. I spent 2 minutes wondering, seriously, if one of the eventual antagonists of a WIP would wear briefs or boxers. To say nothing of considering sherry vs. beer in terms of beverage of choice. OTOH I did come across this

while looking for the proper VW for another character to drive.