Book writing thread

I know all all of you are avid readers and maybe some of you like to do a bit of writing.

I definitely want to write a book for the hell of it (getting published would be nice, but it's only a pipe dream)

My perfect life would be writing fiction and living off the income. But that's about as realistic as passing through a wall (which from a physics pov, is theoretically possible.. but highly unlikely)


..So, how's your writing life?

I do like to write, but I can't organize worth shit.  I also have trouble getting the right mood without getting into artwank, which I hate (I'm the one who voted Joyce as most overrated author ever).  Good at prose, but don't have much to say prose-wise.  Am a history student and would want to write a history book that Anonymous would want to study from, or something like Horrible Histories, and that's about it for prose.

ATM I'm working on a fantasy novel.  Closest thing I can compare it to is Paula Volsky, but with Rome rather than nineteenth-century France.  One of the main characters is a trap like in Rose of Versailles, for the same reason, but she's actually supposed to assassinate the person she's guarding.  I think this will be the novel that doesn't get published but is practice for the next one.

I had to start re-planning today after having written a very long section involving the trap (pre-trap state) helping another girl in a very flashy, fanservicey fight.  It was like "SHIT SUCKS", because the character development this scene brings out is better for a much later scene, and it was a bad fight.  So, because I'm writing that out, I've got to rewrite an entire chapter.  Which I am not up for.  So I'm back to planning to make things like that not happen again.

So, well-written duels anyone?  Or well-written battles?  I need instruction, because I have a few scenes like this but can't write them properly.  I'm good at emo characters, but we don't really have much in the way of emo here.