Too Many Stories, Too Little Time

I keep having ideas. It’s actually slightly annoying.

At this point I have three different stories actively on the go, and annoyingly I’m enjoying writing all of them. I have ‘The Package’, the continuation of my prompt response from my interview on Indiosyncrasy, which is now 16,000 words long and still showing not many signs of stopping. Largely because ‘The Package’ is, in fact, a secret sequel to a trio of old stories that will never see the light of day in their current form, because they were written over a decade ago when I’d first discovered cyberpunk and decided I might as well have a go. At the time, they were good examples of my writing. No longer. But I still love the concept, and dusting off investigative journalist Damon Bryce has been immensely fun. Writing a suspicious bastard is great.

I haven’t worked on that story for over a week, though, because publishing The Owl in the Labyrinth left me feeling a bit bereft. The Boiling Seas are in my blood – especially in this hot weather – and so I started playing around with a little bonus story I’d had on my mind for a while. It’s not another full book, nor is it a sequel – just an extra, which I’ll talk more about eventually. It’s Tal, and it’s Lily, but not quite as you’ll have seen them before, and it’s also an excuse to flesh out a piece of rather important backstory. And again, I just love writing these characters, no matter what form their story might take. And I have placed them in their element, of course, namely trying to steal some stuff, and thus they’re having just as much fun as me.

But I haven’t worked on that story for a few days either, because of course I had another idea, fuelled by several train journeys on which I’ve been reading a bunch of old  Doctor Who books in an effort to remind myself what good Doctor Who looks like after the tragedy that was the end of the last series. Side note: some of those books are really good sci-fi, not just because they’re Who but because the writers take advantage of the freedom of prose over script to get a lot more clever with time travel and with very interesting aliens than an actual episode would allow. Worth reading.

And so of course with a head already full of monsters I had an idea for a story of my own. Not the first time I’ve had a Doctor Who-related idea but the first time I’ve actually started writing it. I’ve placed a monster in an environment and time in which I don’t ever recall seeing it before (and, of course, I’ve played around with what that monster is as a result of that environment), and I’m seeing what happens. I know roughly where it’s going. I know what I want this creature to do. What I don’t know is if the Doctor and co will ever actually need to show up. I’m hoping that this is a good enough SF concept to stand on its own before I actually bring in any too explicit Who-ness. It’s creepy, and it’s unpleasant, and it’s a very fun – but difficult – perspective to write from. The monster’s perspective, that is. That’s the most fun part. It’s not often that I take on a truly alien point of view and while it’s difficult to get right I’m having a blast trying.

So these stories are all well and good, but each is not only distracting me from the others but distracting me from the other stuff: my RPG writing, my next long-form thing, and the big project that I need to get stuck into. It is a daunting project. It is an exciting project. It is a project that could change my writing fortunes dramatically, if it works. And so it’s a bloody hard project to get properly started due to that pressure alone, let alone the fact that it’s just objectively a lot of work.

But I am writing, and I am enjoying doing it. And that is ultimately the most important thing.

Also, go read the Boiling Seas books. Go on. Go do it now. You know you want to.