Notebooks Away!

Nothing quite like pulling stories out of cold storage… it’s always fun to reread old drafts and fall back in love with old fictives!

But now that I’m done printing and reading and gathering the troops, it’s time for some battlefield story triage. If I want to make money at this next year, I need to learn how to treat writing as a focused task instead of relying on random bursts of inspiration.

At least that’s the plan. My track record for staying focused is pretty darned slim, but I’m pretty good at failing upwards, so on we go!

Silverwitch

The main problem I have with this story at the moment is that it was intended as an open ended serial. Thus once I get it started again– I’ll have to keep it going. There’s a break in the story once they deal with Rockfall’s Silverwitch, but it’s very obviously not ‘and then they lived happily ever after’.

I’ll have to take a deeper look at this one, but it may be something that gets pushed back into true serial story status and won’t start post again until 2012. If so, it should be open to Beta Readers once I start working the drafts– but I’m also tempted to keep it in a ‘post as you go’ work in progress serial instead.

For now, I’m moving it off the To-Do list and onto the backburner. Once TWWA is done, I’ll revisit it.

The Wolves We Are

Now this one I need to get finished and done with. While it’s also the introduction to a longer running set of stories, it’s very much a standalone piece. There aren’t any immediate unresolved plotlines (unlike Silverwitch) and there shouldn’t be a feeling of ‘wait, where’d my story go?’ once it ends.

Of course that means I have to get it to end… but that’s what I’m working on now.

As the moment this is how the story stands:

• Only Immortal Till You Die – Posted (910 words)
• Su Casa es Mi Casa – Rought Draft (778 words)
• Best of Bad Situations – Rought Draft (1,077 words)
• Old Dogs, Old Tricks – Outlined (274 words)
• Retail Warriors – Very Rough Outline (35 words)
• Too Stupid To Die – Very Rough Outline (39 words)
• Happily Ever After – Very Rough Outline (71 words)

I have a plot, I have fictives… and I can’t get the two to work together to save my life. Every time I try I end up with them chatting amongst themselves and getting nothing done. For lo, the snark is strong within them.

Well, except with Christopher– he’s just a tad out of his element, poor thing.

I think it’s time for a few writing exercises and some good old MuseFic (aka Talking To Fictives) to see if I can’t shake out why they won’t just move the story along. It may be that the plot I came up with isn’t one that fits their personal modus operandi. Hmm.

The next few posts will be locked with the password SPOILERS since, well– yeah, that really should be obvious. Hopefully I’ll be able to hash out a plot triage this weekend and get things rolling on the rough draft in the coming week. *crosses fingers*

Wish me luck! 😉