Nothing like the thrill of starting a new story. The fresh characters to bring to life, the settings that one gets to create. Ever since I got my new glasses (and they are lovely wee things), I’ve been typing like crazy getting five to eight hundred words down in a day (and with the computer usually in the lounge, that’s quite a feat).
What am I writing? Well, ever since I first read Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey when I was thirteen (some years ago now), I got the damn idea stuck in my head to write about dragons too. Being my little wide-eyed self, I gave it a valiant attempt, but I didn’t want to do some blatant fan-fictiony rip-off of my favourite author so I put all thoughts of it aside and wrote other things. Occasionally the idea would swim back to me when I’d a slow day and I’d tap out a few basics (let’s call’em “info sheets”) and go back to whatever it was I was writing at the time. Just as with the me “never writing a story vaguely vampirish” I never thought I’d do a dragon one as there just wasn’t a plot to go with.
Until now.
Dragon (yes, I am calling it that) presented itself to me some months back with the following line: It only takes one small dragon to save the fate of their kind. Trouble is, she believes she’s human. How could I resist that? So my plotting began. As did the face of my main character: The small dragon who thinks she’s human.
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| Maayin |
As for that niggling feeling in the back of my mind. It disappeared. Why? Well, as I got older and read more and more fantasy, I realised one predominant factor in every story: the magic was theirs. Didn’t matter what the characters were doing, didn’t matter who was telling it, especially didn’t matter if there was a similarity for each tale was different in it’s own right. My own dragons would always be different not because I’d made them that way, but because they were mine and I could do whatever I damn well wanted with them. If I wished for some to sport feathers and others fur (or scales, or a leathery hide), then so be it. If I felt like they should be capable of taking human form (to a point), then they bloody well would. Who but myself should be allowed to dint my creativity? And who the heck did I think I was trying to do that?
So I’m letting my dragon’s fly free to roar and belch fire and whatnot wherever they darn well like. I’ve a feeling that, after being locked in the dark recesses of my mind for so long, they’re gonna be a feisty bunch.
Hurrah for diversity.
And hurrah for dragons! ^_^
Aldrea Alien 