Of wings

The novel I wrote back in November - and that I have unfortunately not spent nearly enough time working on sense then - was based on a post I made about a year ago titled Wings, which was based on a dream I had probably about seven years ago. I can't fully describe why that dream has stuck with me for so long - it was about me being a princess, jumping out of a window, and turning into a bird. But the moment I woke up the following morning, I knew that I had to turn it into a book, and it's crossed my mind several times since then, though I've never quite known where to go with it.

Unfortunately, that's still somewhat true. I've definitely made more progress with it, seeing as I was able to pump out fifty thousand words of a story for it, but there are still a lot of questions that I haven't answered yet. I've established a world of magic - though magically which has been largely forgotten - but I still have yet to decide how that magic is really controlled. My main character is largely unaware of this magic, even though she is a wielder of it, and therefore spends most of the story just trying to learn. But the problem with learning is that, eventually, there needs to be an answer. And I haven't found one that I'm happy with yet.

I want this magic to be something that isn't easy to figure out the first time. Simply focusing on wanting to be a bird isn't enough. I don't want it to be so simple as that. I want there to be a need to focus on an emotion, though I'm not sure I want that to be all there is to it. I don't want it to be as cliche as believing in your abilities or in your friends, though as a placeholder that is what I put near where I stopped writing. Which is my problem with trying to move forward. I want to come up with this answer.

My little bird went through a lot of trauma surrounding gaining her powers, and I want there to be an overcoming of that involved in her learning. She lost nearly everything that she had, her friends, her family, her home. And multiple times, she nearly lost her life, and not only to the enemy which pursues her. She has been deeply emotionally scarred (which, on another note, is something that I need to work on. I don't feel like that's properly explored. But that's more of something to go through in editing.)

This is the main problem I've been facing since I stopped writing in November. I know other things that I want to have happen in this story, and more or less where it will end up. But I'm not the kind of person to keep writing past a missing scene. I know some people can write out of order, but I've tried to do that, and it just messes me up. I really want to know how magic works in this world. How it is controlled. And perhaps it is different for each person, depending on what it is that they can do. So how does one fly? How does one compress their body, make it light, and become a bird that fits in their hand? And how does one make it not cliche? Because good lord, it could not be more so as it is now.