WIPs and Chains

I’m going to start blogging (I’m going to try for every Monday!) about my writing process and what I’m working on. I don’t like to reveal too much about my works in progress (WIP) because sometimes they end up going nowhere and are total dreck, and also because I like to tease. :-)

One thing I’ve learned from all my writer friends is that we are all neurotic, self-obsessed whiners who lack confidence in our ability. Okay, I’m kidding, sort of, but I do find that many of us ride the same emotional roller coaster when it comes to our writing, so if this blog gets all whiny be sure to slap me in a comment and let me know to get over it!

I currently have 3 stories I’m actively working on, although I’m going back and forth between them all. I don’t generally have titles for my WIPs until they’re finished, with some exceptions, so I make up names for them. My first WIP is currently known as “Ponzi”. I’ve been stuck on this one for a while. This story is intended to be part of a series involving a big international security company. I think I got overwhelmed by the enormity of doing a series, and that stalled me on this story for a while.

I then started another story which I’m calling “Murder in the Vineyard” except the murder didn’t really happen in the vineyard, but oh well. I got stuck on this one, and I’m going to blame it on the amount of plotting I did. Because there’s an element of mystery/suspense in this story, I wanted to plot it out intricately. But somehow that took all the fun out of writing it.

I went back to Ponzi. I decided I would focus only on this story in the series, and not the others right now, and maybe it would be less overwhelming. This did seem to help, but then I got stuck because of all the research I needed to do. Since I wasn’t having fun with it, I went back to my Murder in the Vineyard story. But my boredom with the story (I already knew exactly what was going to happen) made me worry that the story itself was boring. So I sent the first five chapters off to my critique partner. Her feedback encouraged me to keep going with it.

But then I decided I just wanted to write something fast and fun. So I started the third story. And that’s the one I’m working on right now. Next week I’ll talk about how that’s going…