Happy New Year!
Since last we met, several exciting things have happened. Haven’t you missed me?
First, I wrote THE END of my Vampire Story. Again. This is THE END of the Second Draft! Not the final draft, I have a major revision to go, but it will be a revision not a re-write. I’m planning to start revision at the beginning of February. I got burnt out figuring out how to get to “the end” so I could move on to the next story bouncing around in my head, so I’m giving myself a good bit of distance before picking it up with my Editor Goggles on. But any later than February seems like procrastination.
Second! I started my next story! This one has been bouncing around in my head for a couple of years, just as a vague idea for a fairy tale that ends (or maybe starts) with the fairies getting the upper hand. Why is it that Rumpelstiltskin never wins the first-born child? This is the story where he does. Well, not Rumpelstiltskin himself, but some other fairy creature. That was all I had, a bare premise. I wrote a short story called “Wing Stop” a while back, which ends wrong but I couldn’t ever figure out why*. A couple of months ago, I suddenly developed a plot and characters. I don’t know where they came from**, except that I was given this fabulous poem called “Bad Day” by Kay Ryan about an elfin tailor. And suddenly I knew how the child was taken, and a bit later I figured out what came next, and then–BLAMMO!–I had a whole*** novel-lengthed†story arc.
This has never happened to me before.
I suppose it still hasn’t quite happened. I mean, the story was brewing in the back of my head for years. Something must’ve been going on back there.
And eventually I discovered some characters and stuff, too. So, I’ve started writing! See?
Ok, I think that was only two things, even though I said “several”. You could invent a few more for me if you wanted.
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* Proof that I do and have finished things, despite the trash I talk about myself. Just not “final draft”, “ready to be published” finished. :-/
** Maybe from reluctance to find the end of my Vampire Story. Funny how procrastination can have some fab fringe benefits.
*** Well, whole by my definition. There are a whole lot of blurry details and not-so-details that I haven’t figured out. And I do still have to write the whole thing.
†At least, I hope so. What if it falls short? Hrm.
