I have always felt that fiction writing was intrinsically more difficult than writing nonfiction, and my current work on the Firebird idea is definitely reinforcing that concept. At the moment, the greatest area of difficulty is creating a coherent framework that will serve as a skeleton for the fleshed-out tale. In writing history, much of that is done for you; you already have key characters identified and a sequence of actions laid out by events as they actually occurred. One has no such luxury in fantasy, though both historical accounts and traditional tales may suggest possible directions.
I will confess that part of my difficulty is a certain level of laziness and lack of discipline, which might come as a surprise to those who have admired my level of output over the last few years. My problem is that I want to jump right into the business of writing interesting scenes, actions, and dialogue, which is much more fun than painstakingly figuring out how the story should be built. The trouble with a patchwork approach is that often the pieces don't end up fitting together nearly as well as hoped, and one is left with either a narrative that jerks along like a train over crooked rails or with a tedious task of rewriting until some level of harmony is achieved. Sometimes the kindest thing one can do for oneself is to put the entire mess out of its (and your) misery and to begin writing a chapter or even the whole blamed book again from scratch with at least the hope that the ideas you've already had will keep percolating in the back of your mind until you find a point at which they may actually do some good.
I'm not nearly at the point of needing to take such a drastic remedy yet. The problem is more psyching myself to exercise the discipline to build the needed framework. As with many other life projects, attending to the basics isn't much fun. But it is necessary if one is to get to the fun parts.
I will confess that part of my difficulty is a certain level of laziness and lack of discipline, which might come as a surprise to those who have admired my level of output over the last few years. My problem is that I want to jump right into the business of writing interesting scenes, actions, and dialogue, which is much more fun than painstakingly figuring out how the story should be built. The trouble with a patchwork approach is that often the pieces don't end up fitting together nearly as well as hoped, and one is left with either a narrative that jerks along like a train over crooked rails or with a tedious task of rewriting until some level of harmony is achieved. Sometimes the kindest thing one can do for oneself is to put the entire mess out of its (and your) misery and to begin writing a chapter or even the whole blamed book again from scratch with at least the hope that the ideas you've already had will keep percolating in the back of your mind until you find a point at which they may actually do some good.
I'm not nearly at the point of needing to take such a drastic remedy yet. The problem is more psyching myself to exercise the discipline to build the needed framework. As with many other life projects, attending to the basics isn't much fun. But it is necessary if one is to get to the fun parts.