Candle on the Water

One thing that I love doing is work that is somewhat brainless. Things like washing windows, massaging bookshelves at work, those sorts of things. I love it because I can just work through the things in my head -- and usually that drifts over to things that I've been writing. I start asking myself, "How can I fix that plot point or that character or make the story better?" And today, as I was working on some rather brainless paperwork -- my head flashed through my most recent writing projects.

I'm getting closer to being ready to send out my novel into the publishing world. So far, it's called Crescent, but I don't know if I'm totally set on that title. In a nutshell, the story centers on a Prince of Arabia and what happens when his father's prized jeweled camel, Kochab, is stolen from the camp. Prince Maaz chases down the camel, and discovers the real reason why the evil Al-Jawn really wants Kochab. Flying carpets, disappearing villages, mysterious omens -- and everything points at unleashing the most terrible evil of all...

I talked with my wonderful Aunt the other night after she had finished reading through it. She was a librarian for years, and she gave me some good thoughts on the book. So I'm gearing up to head back in to the novel and re-write some stuff. Editing has always been my really weak point in writing, so this is definitely good for me. But it's going to take a bit of work to really get it done. Especially with National Novel Writing Month coming up, and a host of other writing-projects I want to work on.

Anyway -- we'll have to see what ends up happening. I've also been working on a huge story to tell the narrative of Genesis to 1st - 6th graders at our local PREP4kids ministry. Pretty much, I wanted to find a way to tell some of these Bible stories that a lot of the kids have all heard before in a new way. So I'm going to frame a story around each Bible story -- and see what happens. With what it's looking like now -- I think I'm going to be spoofing The 39 Clues a bit, but I think that will make it pretty fun.

And with NaNoWriMo around the corner in November, I've been really trying to figure out what I want to write about this year. I never finished a whole 50,000 word novel before last year, and so I want to have a good idea before I go in. I've been leaning toward doing something with Greece, but I'm worried that I've exhausted a bunch of ideas in some short stories and scripts that I wrote already. So I might do something with Chinese mythology, Yetis, and secret temples in the middle of the mountains... Who knows? Could be exciting!

All right -- signing off for now.

--Shaun