Writer Brain, Oh Writer Brain

Why are you so fickle?

I know the answer, of course.  My writer brain has been unfocused lately because I have been unfocused lately.  I have not kept regular working hours (or days, for that matter), nor kept myself focused on any single project (of which I have too many in need of work even were I the most disciplined and undistracted of writers).  When I do that, my writer brain goes into tinkering mode, and thinks about whichever projects it feels like thinking about.  Sometimes they are even the project I’m supposed to be working on.  For instance, the other day I realized I needed to go back and kill somebody off in my novel-in-progress, both to crank up the pathos and also to provide some motivation a little later on for my protag to think about turning into a good guy.  I even went back and started in on changing what I needed to change (there was also a firearm to dispense of; way too powerful a tool to put in the protag’s hands at this point in the game).  I’ve also had some notions about Cowboys and Indians, which I think will be pretty good once I get through this next revision.

But what I’m really excited about, apparently, is this dark potentially-YA-friendly fantasy novel that sort of popped out the tail end of a short story I wrote a year or so ago and have been failing to sell ever since.  I don’t recollect that it’s received any personal rejections, so I couldn’t say why it hasn’t sold, though I suspect that it might have something to do with the story reading like the prologue to a novel.

A lot of my stories do that, I think.  I mostly either think in very short stories (less than 2500 words), or much, much longer stories, that only get longer once I start writing them.  For instance, the NIP is about half done at 30-35K, but was originally projected at somewhere around 50.

At any rate, I suspect I am doomed for the nonce to tinkering with whatever project tickles my fancy on any given day.  My writer brain is, as previously mentioned, a fickle beast, and has to be transitioned gently into focus mode.  So I suppose for now I have to give it its head, and see where it wants to go on its own, and hope that it doesn’t carry me too far from where I want to go.