SQUIRREL!
Pam Uphoff
This winter and spring I have been amazingly distractible.
Part of it is medical, part of it I’m afraid may be age (that can’t possibly be 70 I see on the horizon, I mean, really, how did that happen so fast?) It could be all those trips to Austin and back (a five hour round trip from my home on the far western edge of the Houston sprawl.) Family stuff, good but time and mileage consuming. But that was just a couple of weeks worth of facilitating an international move. Doesn’t explain January through most of May.
There really doesn’t seem anything sufficient to explain the repeated stall out of so many stories. I just counted and I’ve got eight, no nine, unfinished stories, most of them at least novella in size, and one approaching 100K. Actually, I’ve got, like, three series sort of sketched out. And I’m not counting them.
Not that I haven’t always had several things in process at the same time, but this is getting ridiculous.
I’m going to have to find the will power to start finishing them, pretty soon. Actually, if I could keep to a schedule of finish one first draft, polish one, and publish one every month . . . it would be really awesome.
First step . . . finish one first draft. Special Agent. Right. Start right there . . .
Any time now.
It’s rested long enough since I realized I’d had the MC on a Dinosaur World for most of a day with out a single dino attacking. This won’t do, at all.
Then, let’s see . . . There’s Wolf Road and Who Counts. The cover’s just waiting for this to happen!
Really, they can both be novellas. I don’t have to stretch them out into novels if the amount of story doesn’t warrant that. And, if I can get Special Agent out—it’s sort of the main culprit for part of the log jam, just because I like publishing in as close to internal temporal sequence as possible—the rest should be easier to finish.
All I need to do is stop with the antihistamines, get back on my diet, get my eyes checked, teeth cleaned . . . you know you’ve got a problem when a dentist appointment seems better than writing . . . a couple doctors who expect me to turn up for checkups . . .
And it’s not that I’m not writing. Well, the seven trips to Austin over the last three weeks . . . interrupted the writing, it’s just that I start one thing and then a new idea pops up and I need to get that down, hit the slow middle, and another idea strikes . . .
Look. Nobody should look to me as a good example of how to write. No, really. Just . . . don’t.
Now recently, we Mad Genii have talked about having trouble getting started. Obviously not my current problem.
And I have a pretty good idea of how to solve the problem.
When you get to the boring part . . . you skip it.
As Sarah said once, you don’t have to write down every single step.
And I know I can do time jumps . . .
Six weeks of classes, final exams, and then he was off for the summer!
Or even longer periods.
But it was year before an assignment brought him back to his favorite city.
See? Nothing to it.
But, you say, there an important thing that happens!!!! Right then!!!!
Well . . . go back and stick it in there. I always have to go back and stick some foreshadowing in. Or drop a clue, learn a magical technique.
Okay?
I have remembered how to get past the sticky part. The boring part. Now I just need to get out that half-finished story that ought to be the next published, and do it.
Never read anything of mine? How about a short story?
Mad Genius Club 
10 responses to “Squirrel!”
Never underestimate the value of a good time skip
“But Goodgulf!” exclaimed the elf impatiently. “You have not yet told us how you survived the clutches of the ballhog, lived through the flames, recovered from the fall into the boiling pit, and escaped the bloodthirsty narcs to find us here!”
As the stars grew brighter in the velvet sky overhead, the elf, dwarf, and Ranger gathered around the radiant sage to hear the tale of his miraculous, impossible salvation.
“Well,” began Goodgulf, “once out of the pit . . .”
–Bored of the Rings
Chapter breaks are a writer’s best friend.
Time skips are good. If you have a deft hand, you can break the fourth wall like William Goldman did in _The Princess Bride_ and say, “if you don’t like reading about [whatever], skip two pages.” Or one German fantasy novel where the text broke off, and there was a “note” saying that the manuscript had been damaged at that point, and academics believed that … The story resumed mid-sentence, two years later.
One Baen book was the log/diary of the main character and there was a “break” in the story with an explanation that some of the entries had been lost in a storm. 😀
This is what I call the “Hazel Stone Maneuver.” (See The Rolling Stones.) If it was good enough for her…
I’ve been binging on the series for the last couple of months and enjoyed the Who Counts teasers and I am looking forward to more Ice, um, drama when the next story comes out.
Wolf World’s cover looks intriguing- is that supposed to be Crazy Redhead Number One or Crazy Redhead Number Two?
Crazy Redhead Number Two. I am not brave enough to try to write Rael’s backstory.
I thought it might be #2. Should be fun. Thanks!
I feel the same …I’m stalled on so many stories. I look back on some of the stuff that I wrote ten or fifteen years ago and wonder where the heck I found that energy.
I frequently stall on stories, but I generally can fix it when flipping back and forth.
The days when I flip which story I write on EVERY DAY are — not fun.