Goal of the Week: Write 10... 7... a Few Grandpa Anarchy Stories

For weeks I've wanted to work on a Tai-Pan story, while knowing that I should be editing and rewriting my finished Grandpa Anarchy stories for publication, or working on artwork.  But since I've written nothing in more than a month, my immediate goal is to start writing again, and for that I'm going back to what was working for me before.  Writing a Grandpa Anarchy story is something that I can do in a few hours when things go right, and then I feel like I've accomplished something.

Monday I set out to write a new Grandpa Anarchy story.  I accomplished little, but by Tuesday I actually finished Most Dangerous, my villain-hunts-human-prey story.  I think it works pretty well.  I finished it before leaving work, which gave me the whole evening to work on another story, but I failed to get much of anything else done.

Never-the-less, I had already decided that I was going to write one new Grandpa Anarchy story a day for a week, similar to how I wrote a new story each day for a month for NaNoWriMo in November.

By Wednesday I had increased this to "write 10 Grandpa Anarchy stories in 7 days".  I was really delirious now.  I've said in the past that I want to try and write four stories in one day at some point, and theoretically it's possible, but I was really getting ahead of myself here.

All I managed for Wednesday was two story ideas, and what I think might be a slightly better ending to my story Stone Temple Space Raiders.  My first new story idea is Your Stupid, Stupid Minds.  The basic idea was that Grandpa Anarchy and Unpossible Man are kidnapped by aliens who want to warn them about something, but they beat up the aliens and crash the spaceship before finding out what it was.  I like the idea and I like the title of the story, but right now the title broadcasts the whole plot for anyone familiar with where it comes from, so I'm not sure if it will work.

My second idea was also a line from a movie, Never Give Up, Never Surrender.  I had less of a solid idea for this one -- basically Grandpa getting pounded over and over and refusing to give up, until he finally admits defeat.  Not sure if there's really a complete story or punchline there.

I also worked a bit on Hackernaut, but I don't know if the story is coming together or not.  This one is about hackers attacking the Anarchy crime computer.  The idea was that Grandpa couldn't punch anyone so he's kind of out of sorts standing around while sidekicks/former sidekicks work on the problem.  I came up with some new dialogue built around the idea that Grandpa has fallen for a lot of internet and senior citizen type scams, and also a possible ending that may not have a lot of punch (at least figuratively -- though it does involve Grandpa actually punching someone).  Anyway, not sure the stuff about scams quite fits into a cyber attack on the crime computer, or what.  But it's funny dialogue anyway.  It might be even funnier if it's a conversation happening during a fistfight, or something.

Today I worked on The Thing In the Suitcase, and I got a lot written and I like where I'm going with it, but I wasn't able to finish the story before bedtime approached.  So I'm four days into my "10 stories in a week" experiment, and I have exactly one completed story to show for it.

But eh, it's more writing than I've done in the last month.

End of March Writing Update

I'm going to do my March update since I didn't actually do it at the end of March.  I stopped writing the week before Norwescon (last week of March) and I haven't written anything since.  In all that time I've been theoretically planning to work on Chance Encounter, but I've written virtually nothing.

Anyway, I was a bit ahead of two of my goals so here's my new tally:


2013 Goals:

Goal 1 - Write a Grandpa Anarchy Story a Week:

January 2013

Jan 19:  DarkFireDragonNinja  (begun several years ago)
Jan 24:  OmniGen Again  (begun Jan 23)
Jan 25:  Veteran of the Bone Wars  (begun Dec 30)
Jan 29:  Nemesis  (begun Dec 10)

February 2013

Jan 31:  Turncoats (begun Dec 8)
Feb 3:  There Ain't No Justice  (begun Nov 29)
Feb 5:  City of the Monkey God  (begun Nov 26)
Feb 7:  Future Me  (begun Jan 31)

March 2013

Feb 10:  Roll of the Die  (begin Feb 10)
Feb 11:  Trouble Focusing  (begun, Nov 21, in theory)
Feb 19:  Dead Again  (begun Feb 18)

Goal 2 - Write a Tai-Pan Story a Month:

Feb 16  The Pilgrimage of Ian St. Ritz  (January Tai-Pan story, 10,000 words)
Feb 23:  Space Miner Blues
Feb 23:  Banker Blues
Mar 07:  Hair of the Throug that Bit Me
Mar 17:  Cursed Be Ye Who Moves These Bones

Goals 3 & 4

No progress on my other goals.  As for the Grandpa Anarchy book... I've reworked a couple of stories, that's it.

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I continue to come up with new Grandpa Anarchy story ideas or seeds of ideas however.  Here's the current list, including what I had listed for February:

Feb 19  Anarchy Is Forever
Feb 24  Hero's Sacrifice
Feb 25  The Crystal Weenie
Feb 25  Alien Space Bats

Mar 09  Killer Asteroid
Apr 09  The Apocalypse Meme


I read There Ain't No Justice at Saturday's writer's night, and it went over pretty well.  I reworked it a bit today.  I read Stone Temple Space Raiders at March's writer's night, and it did not go over so well.  I haven't reworked it yet because I'm undecided on whether I can come up with an ending that justifies the length, or I just need to take an axe to it, or probably I need to do both but a better ending hasn't manifested itself yet.