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[aliquisa]

I'm laying on Sam's bed, talking to Sarah as I stare at the ceiling.  I've got on a tank top and a pair of size large flannel pajama pants.  They don't match.  I'm practically falling out of the tank top, so I'm sort of tugging at it absently as I say whatever comes into my head.

"I need to be an unemployed degenerate or something.  With a grant so

Comments

[polemically]

I liked this a lot. Especially the paragraph that about the dry spell and Twilight and how it'd be better to write something that was actually awesome, even if it wasn't worldy loved lit.

Whatever that means.

[aliquisa]

Books are so irritating to write! My problem is that I'm going great. I'm going strong. And then some voice, usually - please don't analyze me too much based on this - a snotty 30-something feminist editor-like voice, says "So where's this going? How's it going to end? What's the point?" And I realize I have no idea. And then? Then I dissolve like wet cotton candy.

[polemically]

I wouldn't dream of analyzing, since I have a similar voice setting up shop as well. And she does peer severely over her spectacles at times.

Speaking of cotton candy...when I hear that voice, sometimes I whisper to myself,

"Candy doesn't have to have a point, that's why it's candy."

And sometimes I listen to myself but most times I don't.

[formendacil]

Hi! I'm president of the Unfinishing Authors Society, and we would like you to consider joining our club.

Or, to put it a bit more seriously... I feel your pain. Granted, I'm much more of a hobby writer than you, but that only makes the instances of my unfinishing even more common, perhaps. And the idea person problem is one I fully understand.

However, it'd be remiss of me not to point out that the author through whom we met was writing unfinished projects of his own (outside of academia) for twenty-odd years before the Hobbit was published, and look how long it was after that before his next work came out? Sure, there was a little bit of cotton candy (Tom Bombadil poems, Roverandom...), but he never did finish any of those Magna Operes we see edited to a resolution in the Silmarillion.

Of course, invoking Tolkien might be more discouraging than in that light...

[fsl]

I started writing and posting online as I write -- no going back and editing. You saw the first part, which was just supposed to be a vignette for you -- well, it turned into a novel. I'm not that happy with all of it (though, strangely, I find the parts I'm unhappy with now are seldom the parts I was unhappy with when I posted them). And it means I won't ever get rich from it (like that was going to happen anyway). But, on the other hand, I've written almost every week for the last 6 months, and I'm into chapter 5 of something when I've never gotten past chapter 1 of anything before. And I've got over a hundred regular readers, making this the most successful thing I've ever done

[aliquisa]

Perhaps an increased readership might do me good. Any advice? I definitely think I'm just in a bit of a rut at the moment, and all it will take is a bit of a kick to get me going again...

[fsl]

I can tell you what you already know: short stories don't "sell". :-(

You're one of the best writers I know. Possibly even *the* best. Give it a plot, make us need to know what happens next. I know at least 3 of us who will show up, and it will grow from there.

Just so you know, I didn't start with a plot. Even now, 5 chapters in, I don't have much more than a general idea of where the *current* chapter is going, much less the next one. Write a scene, figure out who the characters are, and start putting one event after another. I won't lie to you -- it can be really hard, sometimes, to figure out what's next, but I've managed it, so far, and I'm no great storyteller.

Chris.

[aliquisa]

I'd like to keep my blog just for quick mind-floss pieces. Short, simple. Not stories, just moments. Suggestions as to where to put this serial?