I’m revitalized about my writing in a way I haven’t been since, well, years. I think it’s partly because of the pandemic. Let’s face it. Everything changed during the pandemic. My life didn’t change that much except not going to Taiji classes and the grocery store. I put myself on a hard lockdown because I have a shitty immune system. I was still writing during the pandemic, but I felt as if I were in a rut. Not a terrible rut, but a rut, nonetheless.
Then, I had a terrible medical crisis in the last trimester of 2021 and have not written fiction since. I’ve tried, but it’s been pretty uninspired. I think it’s beacuse I was tryingt do the impossible, writing a murder mystery with an unreliable narrator. Yes, I know that there is one. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. In that case, though, and, *spoilers* for a nearly hundred-year-old book, it’s because the narrator is the murderer. He is deliberately shading things so he’s telling the story of what happened, but just leaving out the fact that he did it.
In my case, I wanted the narrator to be someone in the hospital who was having delusions. But the person did not realize they were delusions, obviously. And the protag thinks a murder has happened in front of them–but it’s hasn’t. There is a murder, but it doesn’t happen in the protag’s room. The problem is that it just seemed so flat.
I’ve written this before, but the characters I write are alive to me. When I write something that is fire, the words sort of pulse on the page. By the page, I mean the screen, of course. When what I’m writting is trash, the words are flat and lifeless. They just sit there and refuse to do anything.
Anyway. I have written dozens of mysteries. Sever trilogies included in that. I do want to return to my two latest trilogies, but I’m not in the mood for that right now. In part because I would have to read the first two of each in order to prep myself for the third. In addition, NaNoWriMo is about starting a new novel. I haven’t always done that, but I feel like doing it this time.
I wasn’t feeling passionate about this year’s NaNoWriMo. I was going to do my memoir, which is fine but nothing exciting. I still want to do it one day. It’s an important experience (my medical crisis), but it’s just not what excites me right now. And one thing I’ve learned from that experience is that I don’t want to do what doesn’t excite me. When it comes to my writing, I mean.
When I was talking to K about the new Asian American romcom (sigh0, I was griping about the fact that it seems the only movies focusing on Asian American were romcoms. (Besides Everywhere with Michelee Yeoh (goddess), which I still need to see. Side note: I really hate that you have to buy a million subscriptions jsust to watch the five things I want to see. I wish there was a Steam-like app for movies. I love watching the Poirot series, but it was done by two companies, so I would need TWO subscriptions to see the whole thing. Also, Amazon Prime is useless for movies. A sub within a sub is bullshit.)
On the one hand, the fact that Asians can now have romcoms and be seen as viable romantic leads is a good thing. On the other hand, I fucking hate romcoms. I have no interest in them. They’re so trite and stale and heteronormative. As I’ve said many times, the only romcom I liked was not a romcom. Hm. Actually. Of the three movies I’ve said are my all-time favorites, all three of them have a romantic element (or at least sex one), but none of end well for the ‘couple’. And they ane not comedies, really, but they do have comedic aspects to them–at least two of them do.
The three movies are The Station Agent, Japanese Story, and Once. The first is an independent movie about being an outlsider that was written with the three actors in mind. There is some sex-related stuff between the characters, but it’s never the main focus of the movie. The second one was billed as a comedy, I think? It’s also independent and Australian. And it devastated me. There is an intimate relationship in it, but not in the usual romcom way. As for the third, it’s also an Indie by an Irish director and a musical. The two main characters are musicians in real life, not actors, and they wrote the songs for the movie. They were never a couple, but there is some elements of ‘will they/won’t they’?
It wasn’t until much later that I realized one reason I loved all these movies so much was because they tackled ‘romance’ in very different ways than the norm. I put ‘romance’ in quotes because as I said, none of them are explicitly romantic moviees or, indeed, focused on romance in any way.
Hm. That has me thinking. Can I do a murder mystery with the romance just being in the background? And the comedy? Probably. Maybe? I’m not sure. Comedy is so much harder than tragedy. I know that’s not an original statement, but it’s true. Combining the two is even harder, especially when it’s romance and murder.
I am not at all confident about writing romance. That’s why I need to do it. And why I’m excited about doing it. I want to see if I can do it in a way that isn’t heterornormative. I know the basic story I’m going to follow. I know the beats I want to hit, in other words. I don’t know who done it, which is strange because it’s usually the first thing I know. Since my medical crisis, though, that has not been the case. I wonder if it’s brain damage. I blame everything on brain damage because why not?
I am excited about NaNoWriMo for the first time since before the pandemic. Let’s do this!