17 November 2008

My Writing 'Career' - Recent fun - 2007 until nowish

Despite the fact that I believe a figurative no one read the wrap-up to the 'Notes' series, it helped move me forward. It was fun to do, it showed me where I'd been and what I'd been up to, and, most importantly, some places where I could go. I'd learned things during the Wilderness period and was showing that I could use it. I also felt that, if I was trying something new, it wasn't a bad thing to 'go back' a bit. For instance, I'd used 'Dr. What', the 'Teen' Doctor, and the 'Season' Doctor in the 'Notes' wrap-up story but, due to the way I handled the characters, it didn't feel like I'd fallen into the trap of 'just' writing fan fiction again.

It did make me want to write more 'Doctor Who', if only because I'd left the 'Season' Doctor in such a weird place emotionally. Again, in order to try something new, I crossed him over with the current tv Doctor, as played by David Tennant. I'd never done that before, not for a full story anyway. 'Time for a Change' was previewed here, in this very blog, as 'Fresh Fiction for Friday' over a year ago and was finally finished and released about a month ago. Once again I had some new people in the audience and early response to it has been positive. I've got some plans for uploading it to a Who fan fiction site but want to polish up the earlier 'Season' stories for that site first.

'Time for a Change' was also heavily edited by me as I wrote, the most I've ever edited anything I've done. If nothing else, it was worth it for helping me upgrade that skill.

There's another story sitting, half done, while I work on other stuff and ponder the level of detail needed for the ending. It's a tale of El Hombre de Silla and a looooonnnnngggg description of a wrestling match could get tedious so I'm not sure how that's going to end up yet.

There's another novel being worked on, a few pages here and a few pages there. It's based on a 'What If?' to a never written story from decades ago and could well be structured right to be publishable. We shall see. I'm feeling good about it at the moment.

Just finished a draft to a movie script, when was that, last week? Week before? It's a comedy meant to star myself and my buddy George. Early days on that project, definitely one of those 'hope we get to do this but wouldn't be surprised if we don't' sort of things. That helped me learn the basic script structures and how quick I might be able to do one of those again. 'Time for a Change' took over a year, with editing. This script has yet to be edited but only took about four months to write. Not bad for a story that took me five minutes to generate. I had another script idea about a year or two ago. I've been pondering that idea again to see if I can crank it out as well.

After the lull of the Wilderness years, I feel that I'm getting to a place where I can generate fiction that I enjoy and might be enjoyable to others. I feel that I might be getting to a place where I don't feel the need to write 'career' with the quotes around it. I still feel the need to generate words on a more consistant basis but a lot of the writing process involves working things out. It can be difficult to see that it's happening when it's happening. Writing here, on this blog, even if it's to a virtual 'no one', does help.

I'm just keen to see what's next.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Keep writing Stephen!

Your stuff is better than 'just' fan fiction, and your recent stroll down memory lane helps to organize post office that serves as a writer's brain.

So speaks the ghost-image from an ex-colleague at that company I am still emtombed within.

Unknown said...

Hearing someone else's confidence in me is always appreciated as I generally have less confidence in myself, whether it be in my writing or in my ability to fix computers. Not sure why that is but it's true.

So thanks!