Of course, this didn't happen. Even when I think I have plenty of time to write more than one story in the same day, I get that one story done and then I'm simply not in the right mood or frame of mind to write more.
I did not write much of anything on Saturday or Sunday, but Saturday was Writer's Night at Gene and Michael's in North Seattle. I read Them Rats and people liked it quite a bit. I got some suggestions for minor tweaks, which I immediately incorporated.
Sunday I planned to work on The Strangulator, but instead I watched two movies. One was Snow White, the other was Frozen. I have a plan to watch all of the Disney princess movies, and to that end I've also recently purchased Cinderella and the Little Mermaid. I think I am still lacking Sleeping Beauty, Alladin, and... Mulan?
Anyway, inspired by Snow White, I suddenly imagined Grandpa Anarchy with a similar magic mirror. He stands before it in the morning and says, "Mirror, mirror above the bureau, Who's the greatest superhero?" A few sarcastic replies occurred to me. I really liked this, and envisioned it as a short joke scene in some other story, with no real explanation of where he got the mirror or what he planned to do with it. But since I had no particular story to put it in, I wrote it down and saved it as its own file called Magic Mirror.
Monday I woke up, and I knew exactly how the entire Magic Mirror story should go. I wrote the story that day.
Tuesday I woke up and I knew how to transform The Strangulator into a complete story. This one I struggled with for most of the day, but in the end it pretty much came together the way I'd imagined it in the morning.
Wednesday I woke up and I knew how my story about the robotic butler Wilfred 2.0 should go. I wrote most of this on Wednesday, and then finished it up Thursday morning.
I have to say, complete stories don't just spring into my head. I have to be actively thinking about these things beforehand. But I'll have some setting or scenario and I'm trying to imagine how I can transform it into a story, and then at night my subconscious steps in and says, "This is how you should do it!" So it's a byproduct of me trying to figure these things out in the back of my head already, but it still feels magical when I just wake up and the solution to my problem just presents itself to me. ^_^
I wrote 13 stories in January, and so far in February I've written 11 more:
2/2 A Clown in a Clown Store
2/2 Death By Clown
2/7 The Tutu of Lully
2/9 Banavatar
2/11 The Emancipation of Philip Dos
2/12 The Seeker
2/13 The Luckiest Human
2/14 Them Rats
2/17 Magic Mirror
2/18 The Strangulator
2/20 WIlfred 2.0
Also, WIlfred 2.0 is story # 400. This numbered list includes 17 unfinished stories or skipped numbers, so technically I have not written 400 stories. My numbered unfinished stories/skipped numbers are:
037-040 World of Hero (novella -- book 2)
103 Second Class (novella -- book 3)
161 Oz on the Half-Shell (novella -- book 5)
173 Patron of the Arts (book 5)
174 ?
177 (non-existent Christmas story) (book 5)
190 Meanwhile in Zendeth Sector (book 6)
370 Girls Will Be Girls (book 12)
371 Tsundere (book 12)
372 A Bomb In Heaven (book 12)
373 Ancient Cosmic Evil (book 12)
374
375 Space Babes Are Easy (book 11)
376 You Can Be Sally Stardust (book 11)
By this point I think I've written enough stories to make a complete book 11. What I want to work on now is finishing some of these unfinished stories. I think that's my next goal -- but it's a big goal, because three of these are novella-length and the stories in book 12 might as well be one giant novel, so the ending is particularly hard to get right.
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