Listless

 Hey conduits.

Maybe I shouldn't call you that. Who knows how many conduit-based books I'll write... Conduit of Fire is, after all, written as a stand-alone with an open ending "just in case."

So, I'm done with my book for now. Which is amazing! This said... I'm not writing anything at the moment, simply reworking and fine-tuning the existing multi-edited draft, and it's not enough. I need more. But, given that I've legit been working on this story for so long, turning it from a single book to trilogy to duology and back, I'm listless. I've finished the story I began ten years ago. What now.

CP Angela suggests I write something different. Get out of that land and play. I think I want to? But I do love it. But also I'm trying to decide WHAT.

When I first wrote this story, I was just messing around with it, writing for fun and to fill the time between school and work and life. Then come 2020, I took it seriously and gave it a theme and fleshed out the characters, and it made me FALL IN LOVE with not just writing but the writing PROCESS. There is joy in the painful parts of growth. "Intentional suffering towards growth" as one of my friend's calls it. It's really the only way TO do so, and it can be quite fun and even addicting.

I have a short story I could finesse.

I need to still write the synopsis of my book.

I've already worked and rewritten the query/blurb for my book over and over and there's nothing really more I can do for it until the writing conference.

I have another short story I started YEARS ago I could try and actually write and finish (only has a page, but I still remember it clearly), but it's also more science fiction, and I'm not really feeling that vibe right now. 

I don't even know what vibe I'm feeling. The political world has my head in a tizzy, so I could pull some themes from there, but oy, we want to escape in our books, don't we?

I partially feel like this story IS my story. As in: the only one, and maybe, another part of me wonders, I should have just actually written it in a trilogy, and did I screw myself by writing one book. Nah, I don't think that. But it does kind of suck I'll only have one book to show for all that work. But then, it also will make writing the next book much easier and much faster. Assuming I even DO have another story to tell. CAN I start another story, now that I know how to create a proper plot and characters, without having all that stuff figured out first? I used to be a pantser (fly by the seat of my pants). Am I now a plotter? Can I be both? Plotting isn't inspirational, yet pantsing just writes you into a corner.

The turmoil!

(Play on words; just wait for my book)

So.

It's a month away from the writing conference.

I have a writer's retreat at a library with CP Nicole tomorrow. Not sure what I'm going to write on. Maybe the synopsis, or I'll just... start something.

We write for a good long while.

I'll probably do both.

For now, as I brainstorm, I'll be cultivating my yard, gearing up for some planty-plants, cleaning my brand new deck which is, while sealed, covered in gray mold/algae (yet the unsealed deck is just fine?!), and snipping some more obnoxious greenbrier vines (we added about 300-500sq ft to our yard the other day. Validating!)

Thanks for hanging in there with me. I'll update you as I know about what my next project is and how the conference goes.

xo,

Jess

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