I’m writing again, after having to break off due to being whacked out on meds and general malaise for nearly two weeks. I caught the dreaded lurgy and it was really terrible, much worse than my usual “change of seasons” head cold. The cough continues to hang on, and oh, I’m so tired of it.
The good news is that another short story sold in the meantime! *dances*
My two longest WIPS are clunking along at around 22k words each; I’m pushing as hard as I can on those, I’d like them both to end up around 50k, but to do that I need much more complicated plots than what I’ve set up so far. So, I’m spending a lot of time trying to figure out where to take the stories. I much prefer it when I have a clear idea of what is supposed to happen and I can just write it! Alas, these stories both changed a lot as I got to know the main characters, so the story arcs I originally planned got axed.
In the meantime, my were-dragon (het fantasy romance) idea won’t leave me alone, so I’ve started on that. My biggest problem there is that I’m a back-story whore, I like my world building to MAKE SENSE, and I don’t think it does here. It’s ended up being randomly set in some AU that isn’t Earth, I guess, but has the culture of the late 1700s America, which was not what I planned at all. I suppose I could make it a bit steampunky. *unhappy* I mean, the whole idea behind the fantasy genre is that you can pretty much make up everything but that makes me twitch, and I can’t help but feeling like I’m cobbling together a bunch of dragon lore from other stories (Pern, Temeraire, really bad movies from the 80s, and ghodhelpme, fanfic) that will be totally transparent and lame.
Right now my main comfort is that the lead character, Patricia, reads like a Jane Austen heroine. *sigh*
One thing that is becoming clearer to me as I write and publish more stories is that this is really the lifestyle I want: being a writer. I don’t want a “job”; I want to have a career doing something I find personally fulfilling and enjoyable, and that I can do from home. While I’m 100% confidant that I can make a living being a full time writer, the problem is that it will be a while before I have enough stories published to make that happen. In the meantime, I need to make ends meet, and honestly I’m not sure how. Grad school takes a lot of time and energy, and unemployment benefits (which have saved my ass since last April, when I got both divorced and laid off) won’t run much longer. *frets*
But, at least I’m writing again after two weeks of near-catatonia. I’d like to be hitting the 4k/words a day mark, but I’m nowhere near that, closer to 2k/words a day. Still, it’s something.
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