Progress

I finished two short stories that I have been tinkering with the last few months. One is a ghost story. Not like the story I wrote that includes a heaven type place but an honest-to-goodness ghost story with haunting. But, instead of telling the story from the freaked out living person's point of view, I crafted it from the ghost's point of view. Truthfully it was the little story that I had in mind before I went nuts on AHIP and wrote a ridiculously long, very involved and complicated, three volume novel.

The other short story is very short. It is a conversation that had been pestering me to be written for many months now. I'm not entirely pleased with the final result but it was time to move on. It is probably the only story I have ever written where the characters have no names, not even secret ones. And it was probably the closest I will ever get to writing a tragedy. And it is not even really, wholly tragic.

But these little stories are good practice.

With those out of the way, I was fully intending to return to Princess Azalea who has been patiently waiting for several months. Instead, I went to sleep and woke up the next morning, needing to urgently write Sean and Susie's story. Before that morning I had never even known them before. (Yes, I am aware that that sounds crazy - to speak of my characters this way - but they are very definable and real to me so...) Sean and Susie skipped to the front of the line. Just a few days later I have a very good understanding of where they are going, what they need to do, and a very simple outline created. But I have no true ending point - linearly I know everything that will happen, I just don't know at what point I plan to let them go and have their privacy back...and I have no character cards. Will this come back to bite me? Probably. But, it is a much simpler story than my others and far fewer characters so maybe I can squeak by...? I guess time will tell. Four chapters in and I feel like I have known them all my life.

And a final progress note is that a writer friend of mine found me a reader for AHIP. She was going to do it but needs to get through her manuscript and it is taking longer than she anticipated. So she hooked me up with a reader (who is a voracious reader that has helped with another one of my stories) and AHIP will go out this week. By the time I get it back my writer friend hopes to be ready to give it a second read and I can give her ms a first read.

So, while I often feel like I am moving like molasses, in the end, I am glad to just keep moving at all.