alex_beecroft

It occurs to me that I have nothing pressing I need to blog about at the very same time as I am about to embark on writing a new thingy. Why not blog about a project while it is in progress? Well, if there is a reason, I imagine we’ll soon find out!

I’m in the acquisitive phase of writing at the moment. You can imagine me wandering around with a scoop on my head, shovelling the universe into me in hopes of sifting out inspiration. (Where ‘the universe’ = any book or post on the internet that takes my fancy, plus anything else.) A few weeks ago I started random Google searches on the Minoans and have ended up with a Pinterest full of appropriate pictures.

On a related note, let me complain at you over the lack of pictures of potential face-cast people with interesting faces. I don’t want my every character to look like a model. I want to be able to find pictures of people who make me go ‘ooh, look, I wonder what he’s thinking?’ or ‘ha! There’s a bloke who’s seen some interesting things in his time.’ Pretty is all very well, handsome is absolutely fine. I’m not knocking beauty, but I wish there was a bit more variety out there.

Which reminds me to find face casts for Maja and Jadikira before I start writing. At the moment I have no idea what they look like, and that doesn’t seem right.

Back to my main point, which is the acquisitive stage. At this point, I am taking in everything, finding ideas with puzzling edges and trying to fit them together in such a way as to make a picture, though there is no guiding box-lid to follow. I’m avoiding reading J.A Rock’s Minotaur because I am probably going to have a minotaur and I want it to be my own, but I’m thinking about werewolves and how a society deals with male violence – and how one deals with ones own rage – and that’s all getting knotted up together in a way I’m finding quite exciting.

At any rate, not a lot is talked about the acquisitive stage of writing. I don’t know – maybe not everyone has this stage? I always do, though. The first stage of writing anything, for me, is the insatiable need to find out more.

So if you have any obcure bits of minoan lore or books to recommend please toss them my way now, while I can’t get enough of the stuff! Thank you

Mirrored from Alex Beecroft - Author of Gay Historical and Fantasy Fiction.