That writing thang…

Remember that whole plan I had about writing a short story a week until the end of the year?

Then life happened.

I got really sick for 2+ weeks. The third week, I was recovering, but I couldn’t find any enthusiasm for any of the short stories I’d kind of been thinking about. I figured the lack of immediate ideas must have been illness related (seriously, I haven’t been that sick for a long, long time. Probably not since I had pneumonia three years ago.)

I finally started feeling better. And I thought I should at least want to start writing.

But the words, they weren’t a-flowin’.

Eventually, I asked myself whether it was time for me to start writing the next novel.

And the words came rushing back.

I was traveling this last week. I have probably the first third of the novel plotted out. After that — who knows?

I am so excited about this new book. It feels different, and the process for planning it has been very different.

Generally, when I get a novel idea, I also get a sense of how to write it.

This novel appears to be coming to me as a series of scenes, with a series of characters. The structure isn’t clear. Even the order of some of the scenes isn’t clear. That’s fine, I’m not bothered by it — it’s just interesting and different. Usually a story comes at me linearly. This novel feels non-linear in the extreme.

I don’t have to go back to the day job until January 2nd. I plan on making lots of good progress on the novel before then.

As for the short stories, uhm, well, life happens sometimes. I wrote 16 short stories this year. I am pleased with that. I’ll do a post later on total word count for the year, how I did re: 2012 and what I plan on doing in 2013.

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.