#WIPpet Wednesday – May 31, 2018

Hello and welcome to WIPpet Wednesday, a blog hop wherein writers share an excerpt from their current WIP that somehow relates to the date.  To join in, simply click the blue linky up there to the right.

I feel like I only get around to a WIPpet once a month lately! This is mostly because for some reason, my partner and I thought booking a bunch of theatre outings on consecutive Wednesday nights was clever, when we could have booked for Saturday nights. I think at the time, we had a good reason,  but it ended up being theatre on Wednesday, choir rehearsal on Thursday and another theatre outing on Friday for three or four weeks running.

… There was also the issue that I wasn’t really writing anything. I kept getting stuck and I wasn’t quite sure why. There were a few reasons that I gradually figured out. Revisiting a short story that I wrote in January has helped to get things moving again. To the point where I think I’ve maybe worked out “my writing process”. I won’t go into that too much here because I went into it in my Monday Musings post this week. I also realised that because the books I’ve read lately that have affected me the most have been in first person, that’s what I needed to write in, too. It feels weird writing in first person when I don’t think I’ve done it since high school, but once I started doing it, the words started coming, so I’m not questioning it too hard!

So anyway, getting back to the short story I decided to revisit. The working title of this revised version is Unchanging Tunes. It was inspired by this artwork. I immediately had the idea for a character who sees visions of the future when she plays music. In the short story, it was set in a fantasy kingdom and she was made to work for a prince. I’ve brought it back into this world; the prince has gone, and it has actually turned into more of a love story. I even have an outline! Though I haven’t exactly decided on the ending. I was talking about it at work today and said “I can’t decided whether to have the main character end up with the guy she likes or… doom them forever!” And I did a really dramatic gesture.

I’ll figure it out eventually.

I have two bits of WIPpet this week. My WIPpet math is three paragraphs (in total) becausee 3+0 = 3. The first is the current opening line:

For the longest time, I assumed that every musician had visions when they played. I had no reason to believe that it was anything unusual.

The early chapters describe Ria’s childhood-or-adolescence. I haven’t actually worked out how old she is when the story starts. Initially she was only going to be about eight, but I’m thinking something closer to fourteen might work better.

These two paragraphs are from a scene I wrote very early on, possibly even last Thursday when I first started plotting this out. Yeah, it was Thursday because I had been plotting in the car to and from choir, then I had to sit down at 10:30pm when I arrived home and make notes.  And this was part of the notes.

“What do you see in my future?” he asked. He was sitting with his body turned towards me on the piano stool. The room was cold but next to him, I felt warm. He placed his hand over mine on the keyboard, following the movements of my fingers with his own as I played a few stray notes.

“You will go on a long journey and meet a handsome stranger,” I said, smiling as I mimicked the charlatan fortune-tellers I’d seen growing up, before I had fully understood my gift. I glanced at him quickly and saw the corners of his mouth tugging upwards.

“His” name is Alex, by the way, and this is the beginning of their proper flirtation. As you may have gathered from the way I was describing it to my colleagues, it is not all smooth sailling for these two. But then, where would the story be if it were?

Usually, I advocate for getting the words down and making them pretty later, but I am letting myself deliberate a bit more with this one. It just has a deliberating kind of vibe to it. The story wants what the story wants. I can’t argue with it. I’m just glad to not be feeilng overwhelmed with doubt every time I think about my current WIP.

Speaking of which, Memories and Magic is not dead. At least, I sure hope not. I think I will always eventually return to Clara and Max. But I realised that it has been my major project for 18 months now? Not constantly, I have had months where life got in the way and whatnot, and the occasional period where I was writing a short story or something. But that’s a long time for one WIP even so. So I think the break has come at a good time.

Anyway! How are you all doing?

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