all made up with nowhere to go

Thanks to ruuger, I now want to watch The X-Files again. ALL OF IT. (I only own S1 & 2).

~*~

Dang it, I was hoping that instead of talking, I could just refer y'all to a previous post about the story I suddenly decided to tinker with.

I am a chronically slow writer. I've slowed down even more in recent years. It's part of the reason I don't write fic any more (aside from I just don't have the ideas/am not fannishly inclined that way now). I don't know the exact total any longer but, at one point in my life, I knew I'd only finished one story. It ended with somebody dying (it started off being about some kids who loved Star Wars. Stuff escalated quickly!) Mind you, when I was a teenager, a lot of the stuff I wrote ended with someone dying (which, as is pointed out in The Sandman: take a story far enough, and everyone dies). Anyway, I think I ended up with four finished long stories (15 pages of handwriting or over), and maybe only two characters died in two separate stories, by the time I was eighteen. The last time I remember finishing a story was when I was around 20 or so.

Since then, I've started stories, but I've never finished them. Mostly because I can't think where to go with them. I'm not good at plot. Or sinew. I like writing the interesting bits, or the talky bits, and sod all the stuff in between.

In 2004, I started three stories:

1. a story for my friend Lis. It's completely indulgent, and I told her at the time that it might take me until I was forty to finish it. I was joking, but now I think it might be coming true...

2. A story about a vampire. And a woman. And...I stopped writing that because of other stories - around that time is when paranormal romance/urban fantasy started really coming into being genres. If it wasn't then, it was not long after.

3. A story featuring things I REALLY like: reincarnation, psychic powers, and the Wild West. I still think about it, and I draw one of the characters from time to time. The last time I messed around with it was in 2010, which is why I was hoping to just link to some blah about it instead of talking about it.

Now, this is not to say that I don't like vampires (or women). But I've already written a story about vampires (It's rubbish. Trust me. I was 20 when I wrote it). And I do always write about things I like. Take, for instance, my longest on-going story (which I also occasionally tinker with, and have mentioned here before) - it's about a band, and I love music. (Not that it's about the music, however, it's about the relationships between the characters, and how they work or don't work).

But I think story number three falls within the "throw everything you love at this story" category. As I've mentioned before, though, the only thing I'm missing is time travel, but I've also said why I think I'll never write a time travel story.

I think this was the first story of that kind, although I've not thought of it that way until recently, because I didn't start writing stories like until three years ago, when I was trying to get myself to write, and maybe finish something.

(The first of those stories - The World's Most Condescending Kids' Story - I know how it ends, I just need to get there. And I'll get there when I get over the tone of it. There's a reason I call it condescending).

I think that's why I've come back to this story, and why I will think about and come back to the others, eventually (by which I mean, the kids' story, and the one I started back in November last year, with the talking fox).

This is not what I intended to write here when I set out typing this.

I intended to say, "I have this story, and it's cool, and I love it, and if I post snippets of it, will you tell me what you think?"

And somewhere along the way, I got away from it.

I'm very touchy about my writing, as you may have noticed from the preceding paragraphs - I've purposely not mentioned much about the actual story, other than to vaguely list elements from it or, in the case of Lis' story, just say I'm writing it for someone else (true).

I am exceedingly paranoid about someone nicking my ideas.

I know that some things I have come up with have then turned up in stories by other people. I see this quite a lot at the moment, with ideas for things that I think of for work. I think, "Oh, yes, I'll do that," forget about it, and then six months later see that someone has indeed already done that amazing and unique thing I thought of a bit since.

But I read a good quote a while ago: that while people may come up with the same ideas as you, only you can it write your way. The other person will write it their way.

It's helped me be a bit less cagey about my ideas, but not much.

I think where I am trying to go with this is: can I share the cool bits AND I totally intend to try to finish this story! It's actually a trilogy, and getting the first part finished would help a great deal with the other two thirds.

Also I might need some help with the resolution of the plot (yes! there is plot! I totally figured it out in 2010, but as I say, it's proving a bit tricky right now).

Comments, questions, tl;dr's welcome. Just don't throw things at me, it hurts us, precious.