Some Nerve! · 7:35pm Oct 1st, 2014
Now what in the Sam Hill do I think I'm doing, starting a new story with two others dangling "on hiatus" over the void, like a pair of Damoclean swords suspended above a terribly mixed metaphor?
Well, partly I'm trying to get back the skill of writing. I'm hoping -- against experience, but isn't that how hope works -- that if I can get my regular-writing muscles going again (with "help" in the form of mental pressure from the teeming imaginary throngs just aching to see the rest of the story), then I'll have enough of a flow to actually revisit and pick back up those old stories, or at the very least, come up with some new ones I can finish.
This new story, Smoke and Mirrors, has some advantages that the two older stories didn't. The big one, of course, is that the older ones both came out of a very trying and stressful time in my life; Nuthin' Gold is (although it may not be obvious) almost entirely about anxiety, and Trixie's Friendship wanted to be a lighthearted comedy, but before the third chapter it picked up a lot of the same stress. And of course there's the unfortunate fact that I've quite simply forgotten what the hell point Trixie's was supposed to be heading toward.
Smoke and Mirrors, contrast, is fun, and I'm having a blast writing it. It is a lighthearted comedy, born out of a new spirit of optimism in my life, after having been taken into a much safer and more comfortable living situation and receiving some actual mental-health care. I do know where this one is going, and what happens on the way; some of the middle is still sketchy, but the end zone is crystal-clear. I've got two-and-a-half chapters already set down and ready to go, though I'll space those out in release to bump up my pageviews create artificial suspense give myself more time to write further. A bunch more chapters are already on FiMFic in bits and pieces, being occasionally reviewed by a couple of the site's Finest Minds, and although I still have a lot of trouble getting my attention focused where I want it, when I do get down to working on this story it goes like blazes. Comparative blazes. Fast for me, anyway.
So yeah. Hope you like it!
