Discussion: Q4 Volume 42

With my QTR3, QTR2 submitted, I guess I can start with QTR4 once I complete another project I am working on.

it doesn't seem real that we could already be at considering Q4 - the END of the anthology year - but I guess thats where we are at 😮 

I don't have an idea yet, other than a horror story I started.

I'm pushing my would-be Q3 to Q4. So, I guess I know what it'll be, at least...

Posted by: @doctorjest

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I'm pushing my would-be Q3 to Q4. So, I guess I know what it'll be, at least...

I wrote 75% of a q1 that stalled and so I pushed to q2 but it remained stalled so I pushed it to q3 but it remained stalled so...well, you get the picture. It's still at 75%

@gideonpsmith I've definitely had that happen on more than one story, but in this case, I know almost all of the story, I'm just missing a transitional piece in the middle.

I'm hoping a little breathing room for the story will let me find a good, organic answer that'll unblock the story. But in the meantime, I may very well write the rest of it and leave the middle out. It's certainly not a preference of mine to write that way, but I may try it in this case. 

A great day of brainstorming for me. I had two old versions of the story written, one recent, one older--and when I went back to the older one, I found I'd originally written a part of the story that I'd recently highlighted as a major missing link in the opening scenes. (The new story took the older one as a seed, but I wrote it while I was away on vacation, and didn't have it as a reference--the new story has a wholly different intended theme and arc to the original.) So I now have a cannibalized story that steals from both the older and newer drafts, and after sitting with them both for a while, I found the transitional bridge, and made sense of the arc that I want to write. I'm really enjoying this story now, and I have a really loose outline of all the scenes that are to come.

(I also realized part way through that the story could potentially be read as a social metaphor in a way that I was not intending, so I've also included some minor revisions that should, I hope, prevent that misinterpretation.)

But it's been a fun one! Certainly not a whole lot of new words, all things considered, but a lot of new work, and a lot of new doors for me to barge through.

@doctorjest Great to hear that some of those dust covered stories (can you get dust on stories saved electronically?) may be helpful. I have so many that are good ideas, but poorly executed. Maybe using them as inspiration to write them new is the way to go.

Good luck on the story.

I have a dark speculative crime story I set aside after the first scene that I'm leaning toward finishing for Q4. Who doesn't like a good multi-murder crime story? Without the splash gore for WotF, of course.

@doctorjest I don't know what q4 holds for me yet, but i do applaud you for continuing to play with old stories - I think one of my major production weaknesses is if I realize whats potrntially wrong with a story, I almost never go back and fix it, I just trunk it, as I'd rather work on something totally new. But I think this is a very inefficient approach

@toddjones I think if you can put blood, sweat and tears into them, they must also be capable of gathering dust 😉

Posted by: @gideonpsmith

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@toddjones I think if you can put blood, sweat and tears into them, they must also be capable of gathering dust 😉

@gideonpsmith I've got too many good ideas left over, some completed as stories but never really realized, others never completed at all. I'll take a great new idea if one presents itself, but if it doesn't, then heck, I've got a whole trove of old ones begging for some TLC.

@gideonpsmith As an aside to this, I'll very rarely just rewrite a story if I think it has a flaw. I may correct it, if I believe the story is good enough to be worth saving once the issue is fixed, but otherwise, those stories mostly stay written in the form they're in.

If I'm doing an actual rewrite, that means I've had enough of a new idea or a new angle onto a story that I think there's something genuinely new enough to write fresh and produce good work. I tend to get a lot of my story's best energy from the very first draft, so if I'm not excited and interested in writing the story, then chances are, my end results won't be great either. So I'm either significantly twisting the original idea somehow, or I'm maybe thinking about two old ideas I had, and how they would mash together to make a really great story premise that's wholly new.

But in the end, I think you need to find what will let you get the best results. For example, I think @tj_knight would feel very differently, as I believe he's an edit-into-gold style of writer who could happily revise and rewrite to find a story's best shape, while other writers might not be able to revisit old ideas at all, no matter the context. And whatever we do, we need to not lose the joy of what we're doing in the process.