Welcome back to bitch-space. I’m almost done with the Collected Edition and isn’t that a relief. A few details to mop up with the book, the website to polish off, a bunch of videos to record… lets not think about it. The book is just about done, I’ll be able to send it to the printer this week.
Yay.
Double yay.
After that, I’m editing Gamer. That is the next thing I’m going to mark of my to do list, before I get well and truly stuck into Woman in White.
On Woman in White… Tracy brought up the idea of the godly cultivation system and (shhh) people/readers getting all uppity about me not having a well-though-out one. I’m not really sure a) how worried I should be about that and b) what, if anything, I should do. I mean, I don’t want to worry/care about what readers may or may not think, that way lies indecision and madness brought about by critical voice, which is what Bitch-space is all about killing. Totally defeating the purpose. But, on the other hand there are several things in the idea/world building that are blank and which could be very useful for fleshing out the plot and threading everything together.
The question becomes, in the world of writing into the dark, where planning kills the critical voice, do I actually put any forethought into these holes are leave them there for the two-year-old to fill in, as we write the book?
How has that worked for me in the past? Cold Between is the prime example.
Kinda ok? Holes were filled in but was the process painful? Was the final result satisfactory? I’m not really sure.
What about D&B? There are plenty of holes in that, but I think I mostly knew the answers before I started? Actually, that’s a lie, I had no answers before I started, all the juicy bits came as I worked through the story. There were a lot of sticking points in D&B and it’s not finished yet, so the final result is still to be seen.
So… do I wait until I’m writing WiW? I mean, the two-year-old is going to be mulling over the idea anyway. I guess the answers will come in the between time.
I’m going with that.
On the cultivation aspect though… Talking with TJ about the middle books, the heroine’s “mortal” phase, that’s where she mentioned the whole cultivation aspect, how the heroine goes from her blank self to godhood… Does she cultivate? Not in the traditional sense. She was made to be what she is, and so it’s more a journey of discovery. She discovers who she is. Blank slate to god. God to the being that saves the univserse. There is growth but it’s growth of personality rather than growth of power.
Don’t know how the eastern pantheon cultivates (if they cultivate, which I’m pretty sure they do), but I guess it’s going to be learning and practice. Does the Norse pantheon grow in the same fashion? They have a hereditary monarchy, but I guess the baby gods have to grow up, learn and comes into their powers as well. The only ones who don’t are the valkyries, they are made and shaped.
How does their time with Odin change them? Makes them angry, vengeful and warlike. Do not mess with these babes once they learn what they can really do. And that’s going to be the rub, what occupies the final third of the arc. Diverting the angry valkyries from their path of death and destruction. Odin has subverted them and in so doing brought about a bigger calamity, one that requires both east and north pantheons to solve, before they all die.
I like that.
Why then, does the power who created the valkyries give them to Odin? OR how does Odin acquire them? Is there another plot here? What other interesting knots can we tie the characters into?
Featured image by Ravi Palwe on Unsplash.