Repatriate Me!

The last few days I’ve been thinking about writing again. In high school and early university I very seriously tried writing a novel, but was never happy with it. I thought that my plot and descriptions of location and surroundings were good, but my characters were very flat, two dimensional and not very engaging. A couple of years ago I tried again, but didn’t have any clear direction re: no plot or storyline so gave up after a short while despite having plans for a novel of epic proportions.

Here I am again. I’ve been thinking on this for a few days and have decided to start writing again. I’ve got some of my world outlined, character bios started and a basic plot completed. I’ve also completed the first 600 words of chapter one, though clearly that will need a rewrite sometime in the future.

I’m planning on writing a fantasy novel of the swords and sorcery variety. This is my favorite genre and consequently the one I am most familiar with re: conventions. I’ve decided to avoid high fantasy with elves, orcs and other fantastical creatures, but rather have a world populated by only humans. Creating relationships between humans is difficult enough without having to add in further complexities of fantasy races.

The novel will essentially be a quest in the spirit of Harry Potter or Indiana Jones where the protagonist must accomplish some distant goal and overcome adversity along the way. I’m not interested in writing complex battle scenes of massive armies attacking one another, though battle will no doubt make it into the novel. Keeping my focus on a small group of travellers will avoid having to write about battles – I’ve never even been able to follow strategy of battle so do not see how I could possibly write one.

There will be a lot of parallels with my own life, one should write what one knows correct? For example, the main character lives abroad and struggles to return to his home country during a period of political and personal upheaval. The story will comment on bureaucracies, cultural relativism, and the nature of right and wrong. Other aspects will include thoughts on long term expats fitting into their host culture or not (what to accept and what not to as well as the different degress that various expats can easily adapt) and the responsibilities of expats to learn the language.

I have a lot to say about bureaucracies, cultural relativism and expat life. Hopefully I can write it well enough for others to enjoy. Guess we’ll find out after I get the third or fourth draft complete. I know that not everyone finishes the novel they set out to write let alone gets published, but the point is not to get published but rather to write for myself. Once I’m satisfied with it I may publish the novel online in chapters in a blog or in some other format.

Have any of my readers written fiction before? been published? non-fiction and published? I wrote a newspaper column for 10 months, but that’s the extent of my publications.

Aug 25, 2010 Comments(13) Tweet

writing - life - goals