A fantasy kind of flow

 I'm getting on with writing my fantasy novella this week.  I started it on the 1st November, and although  I'm not officially registered on the site, I have been keeping up with my local NaNoWriMo group in terms of word count.

So far, I'm seven chapters in and my word count is currently 13,000 words.  Which is not quite enough to"win" NaNo if I was doing it, but it's a respectable total for ten days' work.

This novella is in a totally different genre from any long form piece I've ever written before.  Most of my output for the last fifty years has been science fiction.  I've written a dozen or so short stories in the fantasy genre in that time.

The interesting thing is that the short stories which have got furthest in submission have been the fantasy ones.  So far I've had three of them reach the final round of consideration at three different professional-rate magazines.  I currently have a fantasy story which has been on submission with a pro-rate magazine for four months.  That particular magazine always sends rejections, so that  tells me the story must be making its way through the ranks again.

So I'm wondering if I need to take a break from writing SF for now and focus on fantasy for a while.  I got put off it twenty years ago by reading dozens of sprawling high fantasy stories based around battles  between kings for power and to win a throne.  They were the ultimate testosterone fest, and usually the women were submissive and had no power or agency. 

But more recently I've come across different sub-genres of fantasy, which have drawn me in.  Juliet E. McKenna's Green Man series of novels feature a contemporary character who is a thatcher - and also a dryad's son.  Part of the appeal of the books is seeing Dan struggle to balance the everyday world of his job and girlfriend with his powers and knowledge of the world of myths and legends. He can hear dragons, and he acquires a swan maiden for his girlfriend, and she also has a real-world job.

So I decided to write a story about dwarves who sail a square rigger.  The ship is magical, but they still have to do the hard work of managing the ship's far too many sails.

Then I get into family scheming, and invented a couple of mothers who are planning good matches for my two main characters.  Matches which neither intends to get caught by.  That's going to be the engine which drives the story, getting them to leave home and find their own ship.

So far I've had the ship they've been sailing for years coming into harbour, and the elder daughter being disinherited on her father's death.  She has lost the ship which was hers by right.  Yes, sexism and discrimination exist in my world, and those are the themes I'll be exploring in the story.  One main character is white and the other black, and they are best friends.  I've been able to talk about racial discrimination and misogyny through their stories.

What has surprised me most is how the semi-formal language has flowed.  I have no contractions in the dialogue, yet still I can get across my main character's furious anger at her mother.

I had thought that switching to a fantasy world with a roughly Victorian technology level would be challenging.  Instead, I've found the story flowing effortlessly.  The writing is a joy, and I'm loving it.