Let's Write a New Book!

At 8 in the morning, September the 26^th, I’ll begin drafting Puey and the Princess and the Sword of Fire.

                But I think it will be a little fun if I share a little on the process of creating this volume.  Above, one can see a couple of handwritten pages.  As each part of the story comes to me, I create many different handwritten outlines.  One outline, you can see, is just a list of stories that I have in mind.  From the arrows on it, one can guess that I’ll end up moving the stories around quite a lot.  The other handwritten page above one can see is partially an outline, but it also begins to shew a little individual scenes and hints of dialogue.

                As I start collecting ideas together, I tend to play with themes in my head.  Some of the themes will probably be very specific to this book – heart, sword, flame, ash.  Other themes will be prevalent throughout the entire series – Dragons/Phœnixes, Princess/Automata, Warrior/Pirate, flight, and the like.

                One part of the creative process that is very important to the stories that I write is the Babel Language itself.  The very names of the characters evoke certain types of stories in me.  Plus, just in thinking about the words that the language has tells me about their society.  For instance, the Babel language has a lot of different words for swords, and many of these words also are connected to words for “essense” or “crystal glass.”

                Hmmm.