Digging into the Mess

[scribblemyname]

I've been doing a lot of thinkiness in and around battling to keep my baby website afloat (long story; we'll talk about it later) and reading poetry and scribbling in the gaps of work and life and blizzards and emergencies and taxes (let's just not talk about that), and I've been thinking a lot about creating stories.

The story from inferno stalled out on me a while back, almost entirely due to fear that froze up my insides and outsides and made me second guess everything I was doing. But I like Rachelle's story better than Ashen's because even if it's harder, it's cleaner. Rachelle is not pragmatic about killing. It's something she knows how to do, but it's not something she doesn't care about, doesn't feel. Ashen is on a completely different level and her stories feel grayer to me. I'm not sure what to do about that yet, but I'm beginning to understand at a different level why Justus and Red were friends in their before life and now do. not. get. along. At all.

Anyways, I got my okayness on again about the story and figured I could write it now, right? Apparently not. Total stall. I'm only now starting to figure out that where I left off is too clean cut, no trailing lead in to what comes next and that I don't know enough about one aspect of my world. Hmph.

And then there's writing drabbles. They're not in my blood right now like they used to be and I keep looking for shorter ficlets to cram in the holes around my schedule and most of the prompts I got belong to stories that are hitting the sprawl state. Let's just say :headdesk: and leave it at that.

Then there's the mess of fanfiction. I reread my profile and realized afresh how easy it would be for me to dig back in. I have worlds upon worlds that are good and I never finished them. But. My heart is in Vardin and the teams and so. Not a lot of fanfic going on.

Finally, I'm discovering that I'm still an immersion writer. Doesn't seem to matter what I do, I do it in spurts. I find myself writing only two storyworlds at a time for a swath of fic and poetry, then shifting which two, but no more than that. The ideas proliferate crazily while I'm doing it and I have to make notes for stories I'm not really ready to get into. In short, I get full up on a world and it crowds out most of the others. Right now, I seem to be in Vardin and Seven Days or Kingdoms and Thorn. Breath and Faeology beckon, but I keep telling them to wait their turn.

Do storyworlds or types get in your blood and out again? Any thoughts on scribbling ficlets when the muse keeps churning out story ideas you don't have time to work on?

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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

I wish I could offer advice about ficlets or short stories because I've never been all that good at writing short. They always spiral out of control, with a few exceptions that sabotaged themselves short.

I did better at shorter things when I was doing fanfic, and there are times when I miss doing that, but I just haven't found myself inspired by anything in those worlds anymore, even though I had really intriguing ideas for a lot of them. I loved AUs, and I made them mine, and I think that's why I am so interested in my own stories... They're almost like AUs, only better because I helped create the characters, too. (The characters create themselves, mostly.)

I can write in more than one world at once, and lately I've found myself needing multiples. I have to have at least one to turn to when the one that was going well stalls out. I have five at the moment. That sounds crazy, but I have my reasons for needing that many. Fire and Water's second part is still iffy, so I keep leaving that one. I've got the two I've been asking people about, the fantasy and the historical, and those are a bit of a special case. Plus the mystery, which has been fighting me a lot lately. Oh, and the fourth in the Nickel and Dime series, which is close to the end, but that's always the hardest part, and I keep thinking it's not any good.

Currently, I'm stuck on all of them. :(

I'd say with my inability to work on sequels that stories do go out of the blood, and the worlds can kind of close their doors for a while. I would like to find a way to open them back up again, but I don't know how to do it. Sometimes it feels like I can't get in, ever. I'm worried about that, personally.

I guess when there's an issue of lack of time, writing down the idea helps or letting it run its course in my mind (sometimes that means I don't have to write it at all.) There's never enough time for all the story ideas, but I think that letting it stew while trying to finish the others helps... If it gets pushy, it has to be written. If it can simmer, then it can be put off for a while.

Since I write long fics, I know any time I sit down to write something I'm probably committing to a novel, so I have to try not to put anything down until I'm ready to work on it.

So... right... no advice. Sorry.

[scribblemyname]

Thanks for the thoughts though. I know I usually play in multiple worlds, but not too many or it's counterproductive. If I'm too over the map, I get really stuck and if I'm not over the map enough, I still get really stuck. It's a balance.

Ah well.

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

You're welcome.

In the end, it would seem, it's all about balance, and that is not a skill I've ever seemed to master.

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

i do believe it's kind of a stuck time of year. Everyone I know is stalled out on everything.

In the meantime, I've been stuck in Denny's brain the past 4 or 5 days, which tells me that story isn't finished yet. Come on, dude, let me go.

[scribblemyname]

I like Denny. :grins: But hmm. I wonder if it's the light or something? Or the cold. If I'm too cold, that can really kill the creative impulse.

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

I like Denny too. A lot, which I'd better, he's the most like me of any character I've written and that's saying something. That reminds me, I should share with you what I have for Laurie. It's not much, but I like what's there. Maybe that's the one I need to get back to.

[scribblemyname]

Yes! :makes grabby hands: