Randomly, and on random projects, but OMG you guys, I FINISHED A STORY LAST WEEK, YOU GUYS.
It’s the one that I posted the intro to here as a Made-It Monday, and it chronicles Becca and Dane’s first date. Becca and Dane are the MCs of #SekritNovel, for which there are snippets around about the place, and for which you can see some character inspo pics here. Loosely speaking, Becca is the woman on the right in the top row, and Dane is the man on the right in the bottom row. You know. Loosely speaking.
The story I finished is about 10k, which is nearly as long as the Dreaming of Forests book (which is 13k), and it’s kind of essentially book 1.5 in the Secret Breaker series?
Book 1 has been 2/3rds drafted twice nice but I could never hit the voice right – the character was always too immature or too naive or too whatever, and so the draft kept stalling. But writing this short story really helped me nail the voice, so I’m actually super excited about the series again now.
Not that I have any clue what I’m working on next. Every time I think I’ve decided what I’m going to work on, I get guilty about neglecting the other projects and so jump ship?
Right now, I could:
- Reread How Not To Acquire A Castle and start on the sequel, which currently has about 1.5 chapters done. This seems like a sensible option, except…
- I’m literally halfway through finishing #FoxBook. I have 25k solid finished and another 25k drafted and that’s like 2/3rd of the book. I could literally have this done before Christmas if I focused. Except…
- I kind of accidentally co-opted my Year 8 class into a book? We were joking one day about me writing them into a novel and then I kind of realised that what we were talking about fit the plot of a book I’d been planning (a prequel to the Witch Blue series, the one with the personality-based magic), and now I have an entire outline and a front cover and a class full of students wanting to see their story (which is called Moon Shot, btw)? Only writing for an audience of 20+ people when you are including them all in the story and don’t want them to hate how you characterised them is scary, so I’m also kind of actively avoiding this one even though doing so makes me feel guilty… Which brings us to…
- The temporarily-titled #LP, which is a 13k Thing that just needs edits and then it’s done? So that seems, like, straightforward and achievable and I could have it done in a month? Except it’s kind of appeared out of left field (it’s the opening to a really, really old book that I realised could be a stand alone with a bit of tweaking, and since I no longer care to write the rest of the book…) which makes me feel guilty about neglecting all the other projects that really should be in front of it?
- Similarly, #SekritNovel, which really should get back in the queue and wait its turn since it’s supposed to be AFTER the Kaditeos initial trilogy and the #FoxBook trilogy, but now that I’ve caught the voice I kind of want to go write it???
- Or I could just open my short story folder and work on completing one of those, which has the benefit of me being able to complete something within the next couple of weeks, which I feel would be really beneficial for my motivation because I really, really like finishing things and it would remind me, after this ridiculously long period of not really writing seriously for 18 months, that I can actually write and finish stuff after all?
You see my dilemma. There’s a solid reason to pick any one of the 6 options, which means that no matter which one I pick, I feel like I’m neglecting the others >.<
Feel free to weigh in, if you care to 😀 If you were me, which option would YOU be running with right now???? <3