Sunday, March 13, 2011

Writing

I love writing, I really do.

But the thing is, I've got this really cool idea for a "short" story and I can't figure out how to write because the words aren't flowing. I can't figure out how to portray Ora's nervousness. I can't figure out how to portray how she feels when Salrev yanks her past one of the screamers. I can't figure out how to portray the sweat on her brow and the frantic, hurried pace of the fighting.

It's probably not really original, but I love my characters. Ora's the innocent one, who doesn't understand things. Salrev is the mentor, but he's nasty and stuck up and he works for the government. There's Erik, who's the depressed one. There's Marris, who would be the mentor if he didn't disappear early on in the story. Ora becomes desperate to find out where he went, but she never does, at least not until the end of the war. There's Lars, the new kid, after Ora. He's the terrified one.

They're the street-rat group, so no one really trust each other. Marris is the oldest, and he's about twenty something. No one really knows. Erik's from New York. He was caught thieving, so he got sent to a correction facility. All the pilots are orphans, criminals, or volunteers who have no idea how dangerous everything is. Ora's a volunteer. Her aunt didn't want her to go, but she insisted. She's from Quebec, I think, I'm not sure yet.

The pilots and everything are fighting because the Earth is fighting a war between the New World block and the Old World block. Africa, however, is pretty much divided into North and South. The North allied with the New World and the South stayed with Europe and Asia. Most of the land fighting takes place over North Africa while the space fighting expands up to the moon and back. There is some amount of land fighting that takes place on the moon, but not a lot.

The technology is advanced, but not true space flight. There's no hyperdrives or anything. Flying a fighter takes so much energy that most of the pilots debunk in two or three months, becoming "screamers" which are basically just insane people. There's not a lot of nukes and everything, especially not on the big cities, because that's the only rule of the war.

I just can't get this story to work. It's short, probably no longer than 30 or 40 pages, but I still can't get it to work. And it won't leave me.

Because I love writing...

But sometimes, I really, really, really hate writing.

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