Bear down now, time

A new story is officially in the works. It even has a working title. A while back, months, I had an idea for a re-imagining of my original fantasy idea, the first book I ever finished and submitted. That work itself was a rework of a rewrite of a mulligan, and over the years, as I've grown, and studied, I realized that while I liked the story, and many aspects of it, some of the bones weren't durable enough to hold up such an ambitious project. Since writing that book, I wrote several others, as part of a series, and learned a lot about staying power within that sort of situation.

The re-imagining, as I put more and more weight on it eventually proved just as flawed. The difference was this time I could see it. This time I didn't commit a lot of time and energy toward it thinking it was one thing, when it was actually something else. I didn't have to go back to the drawing board either. As I was analyzing the weaknesses of the project, the lack of investment on my part because of certain similarities to previous projects, the lack of complexity within the underpinnings, the lack of connectivity between important characters, I actually happened upon another idea that I had set aside and apparently forgotten. That idea was an extrapolation of a few different things which had occurred to me personally, and that I was interested in, and it all took me to a new place, on multiple levels, in regards to what I could do with a story, and how far it could go. My pen began moving on its own.

And finally, I have enough details, enough random snippets on pieces of scrap paper that it's become impossible to keep it all together in my mind. I have to put it down in an organized fashion, or I will inevitably lose it. In my experience, stories can get to a critical mass point, where it occupies too much of a writer's waking mind, it crowds the brainspace. It's too heavy to carry around all day. Dropping it onto a stack of pages is less of a chore or activity, and more of a release. And I'm happy about being at that point, excited even.

One of the difficulties, of course, about being intrigued by a new project, is finishing up old ones. Chapter 19 is in the works, and I wouldn't describe it as a slog, overly much, but I would never call it easy. A few of the recent chapters had disagreeable lengths. In some cases, it didn't take me very long to get to where I needed to get to in order to continue the story I had outlined. In other cases, I discovered some things along the way that couldn't be ignored, or rushed, and by the time I was there, the chapter had ballooned far and away beyond the upper limit I set for myself. And I can't go back and fix it either. I have to get it all down. I have plenty of reasons to stop; I don't need any more.

No reviews back yet from the release... which I guess came out only a couple weeks ago. Time is always misbehaving, from my perspective. It never goes as fast or as slow as I'd prefer. It makes it really difficult to predict if I'll have enough.

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