Writing Odds and Ends

I'm beginning to think this mystery novel is going to get the better of me. I have a plot idea (to do with historic archaeology), I have a setting (southern Alberta, present day), I have a main character (Grace Cowell, called Gray), and I have a title (Reading the Bones). I even have niggling thoughts about recurring images and subplots. And a short, dark and handsome stranger (a cop, actually) who could be a possible love interest. But there are too many things I don't know. I don't know enough of the plot structure. I don't know much about how the RCMP work, especially in cases where old bones get dug up. And it's taken me so long to just get started (one page so far), that I'm not likely to even have a zero draft by the time the contest deadline arrives. How is it possible that so many people think writing is easy?

I seem to be pretty much stuck everywhere. "Daughters of the Sea King" made it to the one-third point or so, but I haven't got back to it. I think I need to read about seals first, before I can write the confrontation with the seal-folk. Just like I had to read about sharks before writing the Daughters themselves. Possibly I need to read more about fishermen, too.

The rest of Cobblehsore/Vinland stories await revision. Well, "Hollow Bones" is done. I don't think I'll touch it again. "Sealskin" just needs some tweaking and smoothing, I think. "Cobbleshore Knit" needs some serious rewrites, but only because the main character turned out to be Torin, and not Tryv. Kinda messes one up when one writes a whole story thinking the character is one person, then someone who knows one's work points out that really, it has to be someone else. And then one realizes that that someone is absolutely right.

Right, enough of that. Back to Reading the Bones. And later today, drawing Sorcha from Fey from different angles to make a reference sheet, so the she'll be consistent when I do the final pages of the comic. (Did this ages ago for Megan, becuase I thought she had a difficult face to get right. It's helped enormously, and Sorcha's turned out to be the face I can never get to look the same twice.)