on excitement of writing

I finished quite a piece not too long ago, my very first finished original story. It's submitted and everything (see below) and its an endless wait and checking the email a few dozen times a day (I know, it takes them a while to read through submissions and then say nay or yay). At this point I'm doing the whole "yay, happy I finished that one, NEXT!" thing.

There are at least three stories I'd like to get done. One is a submission with a given theme, and two are cannibalised "transformative works of fiction" abandoned long ago. Severely cannibalised, I might need to add, and turned inside out. One is set in Los Angeles, the other is a sort of a road trip, starting in the midwest, heading for New York. The third... I'm not quite sure how to work that one out yet, but it'll stay there, being picked at once in awhile.

Unlike the LA story, the road trip story will contain places I've actually been to and seen for myself. Thing is, I like settings. I like to work on clichés for settings and then turn them into something else. If it rains in England, it's going to fucking pour, it'll be all-over-rain, it'll get everywhere. If it's cold in Russia in the winter... if it's hot in LA, if it's damp and humid in the midwest, and then dry as bone...

The best thing I ever experienced in a book, set in the midwest (Neil Gaiman's American Gods) was discovering that I'd actually been to some of the places described. I knew what a certain road was like, a hill, a small town. The low houses, the fields, the dips in the road.

That's stayed with me. I'd like to have people recognise places, if I can.

And I'm really excited about that road trip fill, kind of how excited I am about the LA fill, even though I've never been there. But there's that feeling of falling, of deciding, I'm not going to just write what I know. I'm going to write something I'm learning about. And I won't try to fool people, I'll try to integrate, I'll try to make it come alive, and make use of it. And then I'll write the things I do know: pain, love, joy, sadness, the human condition (she said ominously). Sex.

Before realising that I don't know how they'll get a car to that freeway and beneath it and...

But that is what research is for. And watching a ton of movies set in Los Angeles. For the architecture!