Pushing Forward - More Stories in the Works

It felt good to get another story out in the world. If you haven’t already read it, “The Billionaire and the Bookseller” is live on Amazon, so be sure to check it out.

Before I pushed it out into the world, I started on my next story. I’m guessing I’m about half-way through it at the time I write this. This will be one of my longest stories yet. Strange how my stories seem to get longer. Maybe one day I’ll write a full-length novel. Probably without meaning to.

The last story took me too long to get written. I’d run into a few problems with writing it.

A Bit of Process

So the last few stories, I usually noodle around with the idea and work out some things before I write the story. Sometimes this is of great help. However, I rarely look back at those notes as I’m writing.

This time, I had to look back at them a few times. Mostly because I’d work on the story for a bit, then stopped. Came back to it days or sometimes weeks later and worked on it some more.

I hit a roadblock on it. I kept trying to push forward, but I felt as though I’d made things worse instead of better. Finally, I gave up on the scene giving me issues, and jumped ahead and wrote the scene that I thought would come after that one. That is when progress picked up on it. Eventually, I went back and did another go at the scene that gave me issues, and finally the story came together.

In the past few months, I’ve decided to put more work into all of this. That’s why I’ve been more active on the blog, and hope to become even more active on here and get more stories written.

Once I finished drafting “The Billionaire and the Bookseller” I knew I should think about my next story. So while I was letting the story sit a couple of days before I started the edits, I began a new story.

I tried to approach the new story by noodling things out again. It wasn’t working. It was almost like the story didn’t want to come out. Like a small child that locked itself in the closet, that even a piece of cake with lots of frosting couldn’t lure it out.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. But, like I said, I’m putting more effort into this, so I had to figure something out, because I loved the premise of the new story.

I knew how I wanted it to open. How the hero and heroine meet, and what my setting was. Beyond that, nothing wanted to reveal itself to me. Grrr. . .

So instead of trying to force it out, I sat down and wrote the first scene. Didn’t seem so bad. So then I moved on to the next scene. Yep, it worked out great. Then I went back over what I had, thinking about how my hero and heroine were going to react to the situation they found themselves in.

Made a few changes and pushed forward again.

At one point I was cooking along, except in the back of my mind a voice said, “If you don’t stop and go back and fix a few things, this story is going to fall apart.”

So I listened to that pesky voice. It helped. Because I’m tired of stories falling apart on me.

I’m having great fun writing this story. It might be because I planned nothing before I started on it. Plus, the process I’m using is way different from how I've approached a story in the past. In the past, I’d do a short outline and some character work, then write the story. Or I’d plunge in with no plan typing as fast as I could, till I usually ended up with a hot mess that needed major surgery.

Whereas this time, I write some, then loop back, re-read what I’ve written, make some fixes, and push forward again. Plus, I outline my scenes after I write them, so I have an outline growing as I write the book. That has actually helped me to see the story grow and take shape. 

Moving Forward

I hope to keep going with all of this. I’m having loads of fun with this new story. I’m building habits of working on some aspect of all of this daily.

Right now, my plan is to write and publish more stories regularly than what I have in the past. I’ve become more trusting of the writing process and more open to embracing the uncertainty that comes with it. That has been a huge help.

Now I just need to come up with more things to write about on here, because this is also great fun for me. Sometimes I just don’t know what to write about and worry that no one will be interested in reading it. But does it really matter? I doubt it. It’s me just being too critical. Another thing I’ve been working to get past.

With all this said, be prepared for more activity around here.