Last year was a little too full of things going on for everything I like to get accomplished at year-end. One of those things was spending December making dishes from all the odds and ends, the one-offs, the “Hey, this looks interesting” that we never got around to doing anything with.
I traditionally spend a month eating all those down, so when I start an inventory in January, I don’t have a lot of little things needing to find an away to be put. Well, since that didn’t happen… it’s happening now. If the inventory doesn’t happen until February, so be it.
Meals are ranging from a tin of sprats in oil served up on bread (half of it, that’s very filling. The other half went into a clam chowder that used up a squeeze bottle of pre-chopped onion we got to try, and two packages of riced cauliflower that had been in the small freezer for… who knows how many months…) to pineapple upside down cake (I don’t even remember getting that jar of maraschino cherries. Could be years old.)
Meanwhile, the Work In Progress has hit another one of those periods of Not In Progress At All. So I’m letting it lie fallow, and poking through the odds and ends in the writing scraps files.
That, in turn, has led to writing a side wandering through a bit on a minor character in an incomplete scene scrap from five years ago. It’s not a full story, but it’s restful instead of pounding my head against the wall of The Interminable WIP. Maybe it’ll turn into something, someday, or spawn a bit of some future WIP. Maybe it won’t. (For the curious, it’s exploring the power struggle between two were-leopards: one who’s the scion of a dying house with a long and titled lineage, and the other a ruthless black marketeer who bribed his way into being turned into a were-critter. Because sometimes my brain does fantasy.)
Does your brain ever decide it’s going to go off some random story trail instead of the WIP you wanted?
Mad Genius Club 
Yes. Usually in my case, setting a timeline and saying, “I need to get X out the door, then finish Y, then return to that other series to do Z” will inspire a random story, followed by an idea for a book in series D (which I keep declaring finished, done, no more. Arrrrrrgh!) And something like the Little House on Kitten Feet, or King of the Sheep will attack and insist on being written, or Blue Roses, or . . . Yeah.
Does the Little House on Kitten Feet meet the House on Chicken Feet?
No. It is one of a set of “sweet” fluffy variations on folk and fairy tales. I have no idea when they will ever be finished and released.
All the time. ALL THE TIME. I’ve got new things knocking at my door (several). One new thing that makes an old thing work… A story I thought I killed that’s talking to me again. All on top of the four I’m supposed to be writing but aren’t really paying attention to me.
*hides under a rock*
I have just dusted off a story that sat for years on the backburner. Let us hope. But it does interrupt another story.
“Does your brain ever decide it’s going to go off some random story trail instead of the WIP you wanted?”
Hahahaha! *Whimper* that all my brain ever does.
Does anyone’s brain ever decide it’s NOT going to go off some random story trail and instead just remain focused on the the WIP you wanted?
This. this is the real question.
And the real answer is no…. for most people… (See discussion of To Do Lists and the necessity of adding the tasks you actually did, as opposed to the ones on the list, at the end of the day…)
“…and the necessity of adding the tasks you actually did, as opposed to the ones on the list, at the end of the day…)”
This! So this! 😀
I can often keep it more or less skipping around in a circle from work to work.
All the time.
For Christmas this year, I made lemon drop cookies using up the fifteen tubs of candied lemon, orange, and citron peel I bought at the after holiday sales in January of 2020. Or it could have been 2019. That tower of tiny tubs sat in my pantry for a long time.
The cookies turned out great!