I was moving along with the writing pretty well. My best ever I guess. But then it seems things unraveled on me and now I'm putting if off out of some fear of failure thing maybe. Forgetting what I was enjoying in the first place.

I felt that the story needed to be completely thrown out. And that isn't actually true. I could continue with it and make something of it. Possibly doesn't have the potential to be great, but it was something. But I went and started reading some Titus Groan and Assassin's Apprentice. The latter especially made me feel like I needed to start completely over again.

My guy is spending most of his time out alone. That's just the nature of what he does. Yet interactions are everything.

I recall Harpy's Flight by Lindholm. She was all out alone. And it definitely was not as good a book. Yet, she still wrote it. She stuck with it..... ....And then she had to take a new name when she wrote the Farseer Trilogy for it to have any chance of recognition...

(sigh) so I do think I need to reassess. Need to spend at least most of one's time in a decently sized town if not a city. Probably. Eh, I don't know.

Think I need to go back and write a history. Hobb had that for certain. And she had such injustice yet not in a dystopia. It is escapist yet with great injustice. Only the bastard really suffers because he's a bastard. It's kind of the perfect thing. No parents. Held in distaste by so many people. Just political circumstances.

What else would work as well? Born with a hideous birth defect? In the soldier tril the guy suddenly starts gaining weight like crazy because of magic and is thus disowned by his father. The magic boat series has some pirates and rape/pedophilia. And then the poor sentient boat is left abandoned. Injustice but not in a dystopia. That is what has to be managed somehow.

(sigh) Will work on the history of the red plain. A Claw of the Conciliator sort of world.