Day: October 26, 2015

Funny thing is, I can get really weird about starting a new story.

First thing that happens is I’m not ready to let my old characters go, and I’m a little bit in mourning so I need to have time to work through that before I move on.  Now, this was lessened a bit while working on the series because I knew these guys already, at least to an extent and I knew the characters that I had just left were at least going to make an appearance so I wasn’t leaving them completely.  But the reverse is true.  Having left the series (for the moment, it’s not done!) the mourning is doubly hard.  Because with the exception of one week where I detoured to write a short story, these guys have been living in my head for a good six or seven months and that’s all I’ve been focused on.  So there’s that going on.

Then there’s also this stage I go through while plotting where I’m convinced it’s a bad story and I shouldn’t write it.  (This also happens at some point while writing the story, usually the 3/4 mark but not always, so it’s something that just happens).  I’m certain no one is going to want to read it, or that if people do read it that they will hate it.  Because it’s a bad plot or I can’t do it justice or any of that other 100 thousand thoughts that slam through my head.  Eventually I get passed all those worries and fears, and write the story.  Because, let’s face, I’m not going to please everybody no matter what I do, so there’s always going to be people that dislike the story.

So after I go through those two stages, I have one more where I’m trying to figure out if these are the guys who want their story told next, and if I can really delve in, get inside their heads, and tell it.  This is usually the shortest stage, and I figure out yes or no really quickly.  If it’s yes, obviously I write the story.  And if it’s no, then I go back to plotting and have a repeat of stage 2.

This whole process can take a couple of days, or a couple of weeks.  Usually not months, but sometimes yes.  This time around, there’s was a little burn out to accompany everything, plus the day job sucking a lot of my energies, so yeah, it’s a mess.

But I’ve finally gotten through stage 3, I have the plot and the boys and I’ve barely broken ground on the new story by I have, in fact, begun.

So that just goes to show the weirdness works for me.