I thought it would be fairly easy to dip back into the world of my first scifi short story, Looking Forward, Looking Back (coming from Lavender Isis Press next month) but it really isn't. You can't dip into science fiction, you have to build philosophy and history and structure, even more so in a second project since the surface stuff has been casually dropped in during the first project.

But, first, the story itself. What was I going to write about? The first story evolved from a dream, and I haven't been having useful-type dreams lately. First I had to figure out what the character's main issue was, since at least it was pretty obvious who the main character would be. Then I had to think about the difference between a plot that is romance-based, mystery-based or scifi-based, since having written all three I'm starting to confuse myself.

Okay, that one stumped me for a week or two. Yesterday, during a long drive (of course I was the one driving) I came up with the first scene of my story, which seemed shockingly obvious once I'd come up with it. Thankfully my father gave me one of those little tape recorder-thingies and it's coming more and more into use since I live in the boonies now and have to drive at least half an hour to get anywhere.

When I got home, I was able to write three pages pretty darn easily. Then what? I paced. I knitted. I scribbled odd bits of dialogue on scratch paper. I considered how dark my little world was becoming. After all, my first story had a hopeful mood over all. But the heroine didn't know much. Maybe my little world really is dark? After all, this is the science fiction that is coming out of my lifelong struggle with asthma and the choices it practically forces on you.

Okay, there's going to be dark stuff in the middle. This isn't romance and I don't have to demonstrate a perky world view. I read somewhere that asthmatics live their lives as a series of crises and maybe Lilith's life is going to have to be like that. She can have adventure instead of security and distant hope instead of stability. It's not the way I live for the most part but I understand my character's choices now. The ending isn't happy now but it could be.

Of course, I haven't finished the draft yet, so anything could still happen!