La Vie Boheme

Maybe I've just got novel

Maybe I've just got novel on the brain now. I'm not sure. I've been poking at "Heaven's Orphans" all afternoon, and it keeps coming to me, that even at nearly six thousand words, I'm nowhere near the real story. I'm tempted to sit down and start trying to outline it as a larger work, but right now that seems too big a task to take on. It feels far too large to just be a short story, but I'm not sure there's enough there to be a full novel. Maybe it's that there's not enough there yet. I'm turning it over in my head.

My other source of frustration today is with the whole idea of Harper. I've never been a writer who was really into world building, unlike some people I could mention. I have bits and pieces of history coming to me, but I have absolutely no real world knowledge of how cities come into being, and history really works. Part of me suggests that since I write fantasy, why does it matter if the town I create has any basis in fact? But the other part argues that precisely because of the type of fantasy I write, the more real world details there are, the better. I think I'm balking at doing research. I want to just be able to dive in and write and have the correct details just show up where I need them. I do that to some extent with minor research, but this is big stuff. (How the hell did writers survive before the internet?)

I'm toying with the idea of playing around with "Midsummer" some more, making it more magical realism than fantasy. As it is right now, it's a selkie story, a retelling of the myth. It could be something very different. It could be the story of a man's midlife crisis, really, triggered by childhood memories and what might or might not be a supernatural experience. I don't think I'm ready to do it yet, but the idea is intriguing me madly right now. I want to submit it as straight fantasy a few times first.

I think I might be stalling a little. I think this is post-novel letdown. I don't want to lose momentum, but I don't feel ready to dive right back in to something else right away.