I admit to being a bit stalled on the new short story. I think this is a major flaw in the concept of growing stories organically, but what the heck.

So, rather than beat my head against the concrete, I’ve changed course and spent the morning reading the “shitty first draft” of the second book in my sword and sorcery series. It’s got lots of first-draftitis, meaning I can sense gaps and a few places where I rushed things. I see places I can explain a bit more, and maybe compress a couple supporting characters. But overall I am pretty pleased. It’s a story with a much broader scope than the first one, and the writing looks like it will support that. Even better, I think it will take less work than I had originally envisioned to get it where I want it.

All good. All good.

The best thing about having completed and shipped a novel some place, in my semi-humble opinion, is that it takes away the nagging desire to tinker and clears the way for other work.  But the beast is off my desk now, and suddenly two days later I find myself nearing the end of a short story I’ve had bouncing around in my head for a couple weeks.

I had jotted a few notes here and there, and even had a paragraph or two of pseudo-code prose to capture a flavor of a thought, but the real work has really just poured throughover the past two days.  I figure tomorrow probably sees the end of the first draft, anyway, bloated as it will likely be.

We’ll see, though.

The second draft is generally more fun anyway.

I find that bigger projects are like this for me.  When I ‘m writing a novel I get all my energy tied up in it, and I really struggle to go work on anything else.  Short work I can multi-task between.  But novels are beasts that sit on my shoulder and whisper at me during all times of the day.  Novels get jealous, I guess.  Short Stories are just happy to be here.

And that is the sum total of my wisdom for the morning.  Off to work.