Can I get Jack White to Give me a Riff? [redux]

The subject line just appeared there when I clicked into the entry box, and, well, yeah.  We'll run with it.

So here is my 7 Nation Army:

Nation #1
Steam Powered 3 - I need a new idea.  Werewolf story is going to be a novella - 16K minimum to do the idea justice.  Irreducible.  Which means I have to put it aside and find something I can do in less than a quarter of that, never having successfully written queer characters in a context where their sexuality is front-and-center to the story (e.g. Shenroos, in my head, likes men a little more than women.  This makes exactly 0 difference to the action of the story and gets no mention in it.  Wen may be attracted to the Maid.  This is nothing more than subtext, though.  Courage! Sooney-Crow is straight as an arrow.  Totally irrelevant to her story... on and on.  I don't usually make sexual attraction or orientation a big part of many stories that aren't Blue Vervain Murder Ballads, but those... well, genre conventions).  Meantime, I have to think about whether or not I will ever actually work on the Werewolf story, since it is clearly a novella, and, if I have time, I will talk about that issue at the end of this list.

Nation #2
Steampunk 3 - I'm sending "Blue Vervain Murder Ballad #2 - Jack of Diamonds" to them.  Here's the problem.  Story is from 2008, and hoo boy have I learned a lot since then.  I figured it was going to need an edit, but reading it, I am embarrassed by the gap between what I thought was good writing then and what I think is good writing now.  Holy crap.

Nation #3
Draftyhouse - It's almost ready.  It probably *is* ready, just a hair under 4K and I am terrified to pull the trigger on this one.  One more pass and then put the gonads on and send. 

Nation #4
King of Pine - I finally looked at it.  Holy shit.  Love-Like-Salt is a load-bearing member.  Not that there cannot be a story without it, but it cannot be the same story.  Also, it loops in and in on itself a little more than I want.  Gah.  Lots of work to do there.

Nation #5
Courage - It makes a little too little sense, according to most of my readers.  "I didn't quite follow, but it was a nice ride so I didn't mind" is cool, but not salable.  Oh yeah, it's just at the sweet spot of 2500 words.  So clarify without explaining any more... Fine.  So be it.  Challenge accepted.

Nation #6
Live Arcade - For once we must try not to shirk the facts.  Mankind is kept alive by bestial a... erm.  The facts we are not shirking is that the story is bad sex.  It builds up to nothing.  Actually, in latest draft it builds up to a very unsatisfying and perfunctory something.  "Holy crap, I'm a boy and been identifying with a female character all this time!" is okay in someone else's hands.  I am sure a writer who is not me could make a good story out of just that.  I, however, need MOAR DAKKA.  Well, dakka in this case being weird shit.  I've got nothing.

Nation #7
MOTHERFUCKING PIRATES - I have my fifth (wo)man for the band introduced following a skip, and I am trying very hard to FINISH THIS DRAFT and not start over, even though I know the next draft will be different structure, different language, more plan, less pants, etc.  Abandoning a draft to start afresh is apparently the way to bring THE CURSE OF FAILURE down on you, and I believe it, though it is very hard for me to do work on things that aren't going anywhere.

Which brings me to whingeing.  I wonder if I should continue writing the werewolf story, bloated up to novella as it is.  Novellas don't sell, and I am having hellish times right now just writing for writing's sake; "Pony" and the Rhysling noms are giving me the pressure to produce.  No, they are an excuse for internal pressures to make me produce.  Sometimes that works and sometimes it just freaks me out and makes me fail.  I feel like I should keep writing the werewolf story.  I want to, but I have so much else to do (also Klaatu and two game designs... I FUCKING LOVE WRITING), simple priorities sets that one way back in the queue, and really, I should always be trying to create something I can sell and selling it.  Always, which means something always in the queue ahead.  #firstworldproblems  My life is so hard.  

Right.  Thanks for listening.  Now to it.