Going Back to the Past to Move on to the Future - More Course Correcting

I’m still trying to move forward with things and get stories written. When I wrote my last post, my little noodle brain was trying to figure things out. Sometimes I feel as though my noodle brain is just that - a pile of useless noodles. Ah, well, I love ramen noodles, so there’s that.

One thing I thought of when trying to move forward was Christmas romance stories. It is that time of year again.

When I originally conceived my Holiday Wishes series of stories way, way back, I had come up with four ideas. Her Secret Santa and The Gift of Holly were stories 1 and 2. Stories 3 and 4 didn’t get written because I’d run out of time after I finished The Gift of Holly.

In late 2021 I attempted to write story 3, but alas, I couldn’t get it to come together like I’d hoped. Time slipped on by without me. In late 2022, I was determined to write and publish another story. I thought again of those unfinished Christmas stories, but I didn’t want to be tied to a tight deadline. This is when I wrote and published Finding Beauty.

In 2023 was the Lyme Disease and I didn’t make a full recovery from that till Feb. 2024. Still, those holiday stories have lingered in my mind.

A Look Back

If you’ve been following along with this blog, then you might recall my post Outline Disaster. You can read the post for the full story that I won’t rehash here, but I’d tried to do a detailed outline for a story, which didn’t go well.

I’ve been struggling with the writing process ever since.

Last month, I uncovered the Holiday Wishes file and looked back at what I’d been doing for those stories. Basically, this is what I had in a nutshell:

* I’d written out four story ideas and described each one briefly.

* I’d set a tight deadline for each story, even got fancy and used a spreadsheet for each step that needed to be completed with deadlines and stuff.

* I have this brief story structure I’d used to flesh out the ideas for the stories. Also, made some notes about the characters and their problems.

* Set to work writing the stories.

All this planning gave me focus. In fact, when I finished The Gift of Holly, I wanted to keep truckin’ along. However, I’d concentrated solely on writing and had done nothing to get ready for the holidays. Yeah, no life work balance there. So reluctantly, I had to shelf stories 3 and 4. Even so, Christmas cards did not get sent out that year. Thankfully, Covid was in full swing, which gave me a good excuse.

It was all this pre-planning on these stories that made me think I should dive further into outlining. That I should make elaborate detailed outlines, character bios, sketch out my setting, etc. Looking back, I now see it wasn’t the outlining per se as it was going overboard with it.

Hopefully, this is a lesson learned. Yeah, I doubt it, but one day a lesson learned might stick.

Christmas is on Its Way

With all of this said, and after studying everything from those Christmas stories, I’m happy to report that I am knee deep into story 3 of Holiday Wishes. So with a bit of luck and a whole lot of not being my own worse enemy, I should have it out before long.

As always, not making any promises on this. But it is good to be writing again.

All of this has me thinking about the upcoming year, but I feel that is something for its own post.

I’m in a much better place with my writing than I was a month ago, and that’s what matters the most.