(no subject)

[kippurbird]

Thirty seven six hundred thirty four words later I have finished my short story the Forgotten Fool. It took me a month and a half, but I have done it! I think that's probably one of the quickest stories I've ever written, not including NaNo. It is, unfortunately a novella and not a short story.


In other writerly business, I think I am going to shelve the Alec novels for a while. They're a bit too much of a pet project for me and I don't think I can deal with them clearly. I've been working on them for so long that they're likely no longer completely coherent any more. I've worked on them too long and too hard that I can't think properly about them.

I don't think that's making much sense.

Anyway.

Two things I might do: An epic fantasy called the Chained Phoenix or finish up the first Dawn of the Old Golds novel.

Comments

[kjtaylor.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! It's a wonderful feeling, isn't it? (I used to feel vaguely depressed after finishing a novel, but it doesn't seem to happen any more, which is good).

Hearing you say that you're going to shelve your pet project makes me a little sad, but mostly for personal reasons.

Once I had a pet project (of course). I began it when I was thirteen, and five odd years later I was still working on it. It stayed with me all the way through highschool and into university. I poured my heart and soul into it. In fact, I have two of the characters tattooed on my ankles (luckily, they're adorable tiny dragons).

After I finally got a different project (which I put maybe a few months of work into - irony!) published, I showed my pet project to the publisher. They hated it and said so brutally.

Not long after that, I finally decided to drop it. I put it away, never to be seen again, and the sad truth I eventually realised was that nobody except me would ever miss it. It'd been with me for so long that I'd lost the ability to look at it objectively, and had never really let myself see that the idea had never been that good or original to begin with.

Then I had this crazy idea involving griffins, and I moved on and decided that my pet project had just been holding me back all the time - though, with that said, I got an awful lot of writing practise out of it. It did have some value, but it was never going to be published and when all's said and done it's been much better for me to let it go.

Now I'm all wistful...

*cries a single tear*

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

No. Now I have another project that I'm going to work on. o.O

As for my pet project. I've been working on it since... the late 1990s. It was basically me giving Gary Stu Alec a world to live in. And so there's no real coherent story line to it. I will get back to it. The idea and concept is good, but I'm just not ready yet to hack it away. I'm not going to give up on it, but I can put it away for a while.

I will get back to it.

Eventually.

[kjtaylor.livejournal.com]

What's with the bugeyes?

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

This project kinda jumped me in a back alley.

I wasn't expecting another one so soon.

[dove-cg.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's impossible for your pet project to ever be liked by anyone else. I think perhaps if you ever go back to it, then you could whip it into shape but maybe it would take suggesting it to more than one publisher to get it accepted. Not every publisher is the same and not every idea needs to be the most original (and even extreme originality doesn't guarantee a publisher would like it). :I

Then again, you probably know this kind of thing better than I do but those are my theories. XD

[kjtaylor.livejournal.com]

OK, actually some people back then did like it. But I realised that it would never be liked by publishers; it just wasn't commercially viable.

[dove-cg.livejournal.com]

Well, you could try vanity publishing in that case. ;) But honestly, didn't some pretty good books take awhile before they found a publisher that wanted them? (Obviously I can't remember any off the top of my head so that might not be very encouraging but...)

[kjtaylor.livejournal.com]

Absolutely not!

I guess the main thing is that I fell out of love with it, and when it comes to what you write, it's the way you feel about it that really matters.

But seriously, it was about humanoid rodents fighting against the Ultimate Evil, with swords and magic. Some stories just aren't going to work out.

[dove-cg.livejournal.com]

That's true. If you seriously don't like it any more, it really doesn't matter. :)