Weds Sept 29 2016 -- Short Update

I finished off another story last night.  This one felt like some that I write, where I was able to take an idea and turn it into a story even though I wasn't very inspired.  The end result is a story that I'm not sure I like -- but the other takeaway is that it's my 3rd story since last Friday, so that's good.  I would like to add one more story today or tomorrow, four in a week's time to get me back on target.  Come Monday I'll be publishing the last story I had in my queue before the three I've just written, so I need to have a few publishable stories done by a week from Monday.

The new story I ultimately titled Rock On.  I'm not really happy with that title, but I didn't have a title for it previously, it was just "Butt Rock Boy", which was the sidekick concept.  I imagined a robust debate between Butt Rock Boy and Death Medal over the merits of and the definition of butt rock, preferably during a battle, but that's not a plot in and of itself, and when I came up with a plot it ultimately felt a bit disjointed... as if the story goes one way and then sidetracks into a discussion on music for too long, and then comes back to an ending that is a little bit out of left field.  I tried to tweak it a bit to make the ending seem more organic and to tie in the rock conversation -- I'm not sure I succeeded.

But as I said, that's three new stories in the queue, at least one of which needs more work.  ^_^  One or two more would be ideal, so my goal today is another new story.  Also I want to try a Halloween themed story, I've never really done that and now would be the time to get it written.  ^_^

New Stories This Week

I wrote a story last Friday called Bump.  It was one of those ideas that I had when I was half-asleep, and I got up and jotted it down and then didn't work on it for a couple of weeks.  I was certain at the time that it was a sure-fire story idea with a killer punch line -- but when I got around to actually writing it, it seemed very weak.  Still, I hadn't written anything in more than a week so I was glad to get something written at least, even if it's probably not publishable in its current form.

Two weeks ago I had a nice backlog of four stories, and I thought I was getting ahead of the game here.  Then I got lazy and as of this morning I had a backlog of just one story and the thing I wrote on Friday that isn't publishable.  So I wrote another story this morning, and I like that one so I've got a backlog of at least 2 stories now, and one that maybe I can fix.  But I really need to write one or two more of my ideas into actual stories this week.

The story I wrote this morning needed a sidekick, and I went looking in my story ideas folder, which I haven't visited in more than a year I think, thanks to having worked on an entire book of linked stories.  What I'm writing now for the web site are mostly random stories (after the first six, which wound up being kind of linked).  My story ideas folder is crammed full of random story ideas from the past several years, and in most cases I don't remember what those ideas were, so opening them up is kind of fun.  I was looking for a sidekick idea for my story, and I found a story idea about a sidekick named Capsaicin Kid, and that fit perfectly with what I was writing, so I kind of combined two ideas into one story.  I renamed the story Code Habanero.

My goal for the rest of the week is to write at least one or two more stories.  I have a lot of ideas to work with, but turning them into actual stories is always the tricky part.  ^_^

Right now I'm trying to figure out a story for a bug-related supergroup, and I have another story idea about a cockroach-based sidekick  and that's another situation where two different but related ideas can probably dovetail into one single story -- if I can just figure out the setting/plot and punch line.

Writer's Night September 2016

So this month's writer's night was at my place -- and it could possibly be the last time I host writer's night in this apartment since my rent is up in December and I have yet to know by how much they want to raise the rent.  On the other hand, I don't want to move and rent is going up everywhere so the odds that I could find a cheaper place may be slim and none.  I'll stay put another year if I can possibly afford to.

Anyway Jeff showed up a bit early and we talked while I straightened up the room.  I bought pizza at Papa John's, and I bought way more than was needed but I never know what people are going to want, so I end up getting one of what I want (gourmet vegetarian) and one or two others.  This time around I knew at least that Chuck likes basic cheese with pepperoni, and as it happens Papa Johns has a deal for a $5.00 cheese and pepperoni pizza, so that was easy.  Chuck and Quinn showed up right at 7 PM, so we had four people total... and 3 pizzas.  Like I said, way too much.

Chuck didn't have anything new but he read several sections of his current Felicia story that Jeff and I hadn't heard yet -- he read them two months ago at Sheryl's place but I forgot about writer's night in July, so I missed that one.  he has some really interesting characters in this story and it's moving along very nicely -- I'd heard the opening scenes several times before, so it was nice to hear some of the newer stuff.

I read The Eagle Has Landed, one of my older Grandpa Anarchy stories (#107 out of at least 220) .  This one introduces the Russian Eagle, a hero who is possibly related to Grandpa Anarchy.  It's a fun story that back in July I said I needed to read at a writer's night at some point, and people liked it.

As I might have suspected, Jeff and Chuck didn't know about my Grandpa Anarchy Tales site that I started three weeks ago.  That's a disadvantage of me only being on Twitter... probably other people like Keith & Juli also don't know about it, since they also mostly do Facebook instead.  I suppose I could get a Facebook account just to announce when I've put a new story up but... nah.  I'm never going to have a Facebook account.

Things broke up right after that, so it was a surprisingly short meeting, but a good one I think.  ^_^

The Excitement Ebb and Flow

This time last week I was super excited about my new project:  the Grandpa Anarchy website, where I proposed to publish one new Grandpa Anarchy story online each week.  I had published a new story on Sunday and then written two more stories in the next two days.  In the back of my mind I knew I needed a good backlog of stories -- despite my best efforts I don't actually write a story every week, and sometimes I've gone for months without writing anything -- but I really wanted to publish another story right away.  Having just one story up on the site was bugging me -- I was impatient to reach the point where the blog had a good backlog of stories.

I convinced myself that I could publish one "classic" Grandpa Anarchy story a month.  I didn't want to burn through my backlog of stories -- I want to publish most of those in actual books rather than online, and force myself to write new stories for the blog -- but one story a month seemed fair enough.  I published a second story on Thursday, taken from my earliest collection of stories, and that satisfied my urge to publish more.

And then... I got stuck on my fourth story, and didn't write on the weekend.  Sunday came before I knew it and I wasn't ready to even think about what to put up on the blog.  By Monday I'd written next to nothing, just a few extra lines on the story I was in theory working on, and I was having doubts about the two stories I'd actually written.  I mean, I wrote them a week ago, nobody else had seen them, were they even worth putting up?  One in particular called Write Your Way Out seemed very weak.  Eventually I published the other one late Monday -- after reading through it again and editing slightly, I decided  I liked it fairly well -- but I was worried again that I could really manage to do this, and feeling like I had no backlog.

I don't really get depressed as a rule.  But I was certainly feeling a lot less excited about my new blog, and worried that I might eventually stop working on it.  That had always been a concern and that's what I initially wasn't going to launch it until I had an already-written backlog of stories.

Today I finally broke through on Presentation, the story I'd been trying to write for a week.  I think it works pretty well.  Of course, I usually think stories I've just finished writing work pretty well, but  I may have also thought of a better way to go back and fix Write Your Way Out, and I have more ideas for stories.  If I can get one or two more written before Sunday, I'll be in a pretty good position, with almost a month's worth of stories waiting for the site.

It's amazing how much finishing a story improves my mood.  ^_^

I think ultimately I should try to maintain a backlog of about a dozen stories -- three months worth.  But if I can manage two more stories this week, that'll be a start.  In the meantime I'm feeling much more optimistic about getting more writing done.