It isn't going to work. The basic premise I have isn't going to work. And I mean that it isn't publishable. Something's wrong with the idea itself.

So now I am questioning(ever so slightly) if I can write something else. I can't get this idea, this place, these people, out of my head and yet I know that I can't sell it. Something's nagging at me to put it down but write it any way.

I feel like it's wasting time.

It started when I was 11 years old and had a dream about getting kidnapped by aliens. I wrote ten drafts as a short story between then and high scvhool, when I sat down and wrote my first novel-lengh story.

It sucked. It was completely implausible.

So I began changing things. Little things at first and then bigger things and bigger things.

It is currently still my pet project. I've got it pretty well outlined. The only thing it has in common with that story I wrote when I was 11 years old is the name of one of the main characters -- and she isn't born until the second book in the trilogy.

NOTHING IS SACRED

If you remember that when you're working on ideas, then you will be able to salvage something you really love out of what you've got. I refuse to believe that it's as unsalvagable as you're presenting.

I find that often my first intuitive hit is correct. Chances are, so is yours. You don't say specifically WHAT you think isn't working. What does your first intuitive guess tell you?

Experiment. Try writing an alternate version, adjusting it according to what your gut feeling is telling you. Most importantly, SAVE what you've already done; rename it, archive it. You don't have to consign it to the trash. Knowing the original version is always still there will give you the courage to try a secondary approach. Once you've done the rewrite, you may decide it's OK to trash the first version, or you may elect to merge parts of the two.

But be willing, always be willing, to sacrifice the bits in favor of the whole.

You will look back on a good many things that you sold and cringe (assuming that you sell a good many things). Maybe not enough to wish you hadn't sold them, but then again.... Seriously, usually only enough to wish that you'd worked on them a bit more, or followed your instincts rather than that advice about marketability, or that you'd just sold it to someone else.

What would have to be different to make it workable?

There are some popular controversies such as homosexuality in which you can get readers on either side of the issue, depending upon which choir you wish to preach to.

There are some common sense ideas that some people are going to gasp at for some silly reason but, written well, could really bring truth back into the topic. For example, a few months ago there was a woman who got some publicity for daring to say she loved her husband more than her children, no matter how much sense this actually made.

There really are some things that we (humans in the US in the 21st century) can't or won't handle. I find it mildly sad. In another story, I wanted to have my main character perform a humanoid (she was an alien so not really human) sacrifice and still remain sympathetic to the reader because of the way society forced her into doing what she did. But in the end, nobody would buy that either so I changed it so that she wasn't given the task until nearer the end of the story and then made different choices.

We live in a world of moral absolutes and it is very difficult for us to fathom other ways, even real other ways. It is always wrong to kill. Heck, on the news twice in the last month (local to Kansas City) there were two self-defense killings. Clearly self-defense. And the news reported it as if the homeowners (they were both protecting their homes from armed burglars) had done something wrong but might get off anyway due to a technicality!

When I see more of the story, I might be able to tell you whether you've picked the right starting point of your story.

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I was very sad for my main character because she was 300 years old and nobody would love her.

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I love children. That's why I don't project sexual impulses on them. The same thing is true of at least a few people in the "300 and over" range. I love them, but I don't get all sexual about it. The same thing is true about the men I love, the family members I love, and all of you.

Love is not a matter of finding a warm place to put it.

Enough on that subject.

Anyone here watching Karin? If you're doing a vampire themed story that involves little girls dealing with...you need to watch this. I'm serious, even if you've never watched anime before. Download a bittorrent client, go to a.f.k or whereever, and start watching this. I'll not changing my stance on the issue as expressed above...but I really do cry when I'm watching that episode.

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Love is not a matter of finding a warm place to put it.

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Watch Karin. I've loved every moment of it so far. That serves as a dissertation in itself.

Speaking more directly to the issue of the ageless sylph...if there wasn't any hint of sexuality in the man's interest, I find it hard to understand what anyone could have been upset about. Men normally like little kids, we all recognize an aversion to them as being pathological. All adults are fascinated with the peculiar beauty of childhood. A child who is precocious is just that much more delightful...as long as that unusual development stays away from certain subjects. We find children old in the ways of manipulation and death frightening and pitiable at once, and there is a similar sense when a child is advanced in sexuality.

But then again, the whole thing about the MC being so overly sexual in nature in a subtle way(like many characters in life or fiction, most people classified as vampires do have an attraction that is undeniable, whether it be sexual or not, the attraction is there.)

So what is being read in as sexual is just an interpretation by the reader. I never say that she wants to have sex with him, only that she is drawn to him. She is an old soul, one that wasn't exactly cleansed before being born again. She is there for a purpose. Her role is small but profound.

A: What is the basic premise of your novel? You should be able to state that in a couple of sentences.

B: Why do you think your basic premise doesn't work? Again, you should be able to state this in a sentence or two. No hand-wringing allowed. Just the facts, ma'am.

C: We're your support group. We're there for you, kiddo. But I'm not clear as to what kind of support you're looking for. Just feeling a bit whingy and need to vent? Need advice on how to step back from a MS that's got you all OCD? Need us to tell you to quit with the self-doubt, obey the literary voices in your head, and get back to work?

B. It deals with religion. And most people believe that Vampires and witches are evil.

C.What's whingy?

I read posts here and in other places and I got the impression that I shouldn't write something that's too deep. The more I try to change it, the deeper it gets. I can't seem to compile all of the advice given and turn it into something I understand.

B. It deals with religion. And most people believe that Vampires and witches are evil.

So don't. Write your story. Let me repeat that. Write YOUR story. If you're driving along with only a bit of your attention on the road and the rest of it with the squabbling flock of backseat drivers you've invited along, your driving becomes poorer. And if you're writing along with more attention to the critiques than to your original vision, the story becomes poorer.

My advice after reading the above-quoted sentences would be to immediately take your WIP out of the public eye and write it the way you originally envisioned it. There will be plenty of time to get feedback and critiques later, but it looks like getting them now is distressing you and taking you away from your story. YOUR story.

Stop making it anything but YOURS.

Just make sure you have substantial information inside the story to keep the tunnel down to the deep from collapsing. Basically, be consistant in the rules you establish for your world.

There is nothing wrong with religion or creating alternate theories of the start of religion. Everyone does it to the jewish and christian religions without worry for repurcussion and if you write it decently and make it controversial, well, making the news is free press, free advertising. Now, that said, rewriting islam will get you even more press and a hefty price on your head.

You are aiming at an established target audience, even if you go very deep philosophically. Anne Rice had some very very deep philosophies wrapped into her stories, sometimes bigger than her talent. But, she still sold the books and got her stories and her philosophies read.

Its tough to write deep without sacrificing narrative flow. Fitting in the rules may come across as preachy or legalese if its rushed. Keep it interesting and keep it moving and fit in your base rules of the universe (religion).

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So don't. Write your story. Let me repeat that. Write YOUR story. If you're driving along with only a bit of your attention on the road and the rest of it with the squabbling flock of backseat drivers you've invited along, your driving becomes poorer. And if you're writing along with more attention to the critiques than to your original vision, the story becomes poorer.

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I love that analogy. It's taken me a while to discover how true that is. I think it was Stephen King who said he never lets anyone see the first draft of a story he's working on, outside himself of course. It's only after the first draft that he lets others take a look.

The more I write, the more wisdom I see in that.

Edited to add that I love Paul Gallico's stories (The Abandonded, The Snow Goose, The Poseidon Adventure). One reviewer said that when you tell someone the summary of a Paul Gallico story, it can sound highly implausible and at times silly (I mean just take a look at the premise for Love of Seven Dolls). But when you read the story itself, he makes it work. Maybe he would be an author to look into for inspiration/how-to.

Anyway, this gets back to one of the things that may be a basic difference between men and women. Men don't necessarily associate sex with love. In fact, one thinks of John Wayne's character in North to Alaska, who has difficulty pursuing the woman he loves because he loves her. Men get that. I'm not sure that women do.

Part of this is because for women, the expression of sexuality is far more pervasive in all their interactions. It's much harder for women to draw a sharp line between an expression of sexual affection and other kinds of interaction. Female POVs, written by women, tend to read...like romance. Most women who don't write romance (or "woman's" literature) have struggled to overcome this problem. Honestly, I think it's not necessary to overcome it, only to understand it.

But the converse it true as well. Women need to understand that male sexuality is actually very circumscribed, far more so than the way men have been trained to speak would have you believe. For instance, men don't actually get "hard-ons" for drag-racing, or extreme sports, or football, or whatever. When they speak this way, they are (as nearly as I can tell) merely reveling in the fact that women don't understand anything about male sexuality. That's another basic difference between men and women, while women want men to understand what it's like to be a woman (and men are naturally motivated to find out what makes women tick), men don't have any desire for women to figure out what makes men tick. They might want particular women to understand them as individuals, but they don't want those women to understand masculinity. The exact reasons for this are hard to explicate. I think it's probably a means for providing additional security against reproductive cheating, though there could be other factors.

Anyhow, this is all in the nature of a digression.

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Anyone here watching Karin? If you're doing a vampire themed story that involves little girls dealing with...you need to watch this. I'm serious, even if you've never watched anime before. [...] I really do cry when I'm watching that episode.

By the way, I didn't tell you which episode it was on purpose, you have to just start at the beginning

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I nearly cried from watching the first episode. I've yet to see anime done in a way that isn't a form of torture.

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Whatever that is, if not the first, is what I watched.

Edited to add... I did come close to stopping 3 times, but decided to muster my way through.

OK, I'll even summarise.

The middle child of 3 is the MC, named Karin. She's apparently not "good" at being a vampire. She reacts badly to a male newcomer to school. She eventually bleeds in front of him, at which point the viewer is finally told the she is a "reverse" vampire, in that she creates blood (I might add that since she knew all along, so should the viewer). Her father is a half-wit, her mother domineering and bitchy. Her younger sister hasn't become a "full" vampire, and her brother was off somewhere, not actually in the episode.

One thing that may need explanation. In anime, nosebleeds are conventionally regarded as resulting from sexual arousal in males. Thus it is a matter of dire mortification that Karin suffers from them (in addition to endangering her family secret). For related reasons, the title of every episode is [Something] is so Embarrassing. If you have problems dealing with girls dealing with things that are embarrassing, you probably will have trouble enjoying the show. It's not for everyone.

Consider these two examples of American fantasies where bodies were mismatched with personalities:

In the movie Big, Tom Hanks had a physical relationship with an adult woman, even though his character was well under the age of consent. The movie never showed a sex scene, but imagine what it would have been like if the same relationship had been depicted showing a little boy's body to remind us that he was a kid. Shocking.

In the movie Ghost, Patrick Swayze inhabit's Whoopie Goldberg's body and kisses Demi Moore. During the kiss we don't see Whoopie Goldberg, despite that fact that in the story it is clearly her body in this metaphysical adventure. I'm sure that reason is that an American audience would stop seeing a supernatural story and start seeing a homosexual story.

It printed form your readers might tolerate your story. Maybe. If it were made into a movie, the same story would be branded child pornography in this country. It might be okay in Europe.

I do find all anime to be "bad," though yes, I was being melodramtic about it. Subtitles are an annoynace for any movie, as it detracts from what I'm trying to watch happen, but that is a minor, nit. A good movie can overcome that setback.

My main problem with anime is the "bad acting." In the Karin episode, when she goes through the park and falls down before the guy sleeping on the bench, his "reaction" to jump up on the bench was awful. Next, is the style of the animation itself.

Big isn't subtle about driving home the point that a lot of "becoming an adult" really is just a matter of your body's age. It doesn't deny the role of establishment and experience, but it does subordinate them. After all, not everyone has the same experiences growing up anyway. And in our modern culture, only a relative minority of adults really depend on their known history, most of us deal with people who haven't known us since childhood.

As for sex being between bodies rather than people...that's just the way it is. If you have people who don't have bodies, they can't have sex. On the other hand, bodies have sex all the time without people. It's as simple as that.

Now, you might feel that sexuality is an essential characteristic of the person. That's an interesting subject, but not one on which there is universal agreement. I believe it, many people I know also believe it, but a great many people vehemently disagree with that notion. And I don't think that it matters for purposes of argument. If I wake up tomorrow in a ten year old body, I'm not going to try going on any dates (presuming I otherwise would have). It would freak me out to be expressing my mumblesome sexuality through a ten year old body, leave aside how it would make my date feel, I wouldn't feel comfortable with it.

I think the same thing would be true if I woke up in a woman's body. Look, I don't think that my personhood is directly connected to certain bits of my body, but I wouldn't be eager to remind myself that they were missing in action by trying to get it on. Maybe that's just me. And I'd probably get used to the physical changes after a while. So maybe that doesn't support my argument so well.

But the ten year old thing...yeah, I'd go ahead and wait a few years, and the problem would start to solve itself. For a different guy (or a woman) I'm sure the answer would be different. But to me, and to most people (including women) the body makes a big difference when you're talking about sex. We have sex with bodies, we can't have sex without them, and the form of that body makes a big difference in what that sex is like.

Just think of how difficult it is for most people to deal with even minor changes in the body when it comes to sexual expression. Women who've had mastectomies or hysterectomies, men who suffer from erectile dysfunction, para/quadraplegics, even facial scarring or loss of a relatively non-sexual body part like an arm or leg. When a loving couple already committed to a sexual relationship has to deal with such an issue, it is a very real hardship.