in-between-ness

I'm sure in a year or two I'm going to look back on this summer and say "that was the in-between summer," and shudder. Indeed this past year has been a series of "hurry up and wait," games, but that aside, as I've been struggling to write more effectively this past week, I've realized that my writing problem--such as it is--and my life problem--such as it is--are really the same. I'm in-between big things and I'm not sure how to keep things moving. This entry is an exploration of this.

The writing first, on the assumption that you're much more interested in that anyway:

I'm I don't know where I got the idea that trailing edge was going to be something really long term, but it's becoming clear to me, that while I have a few weeks worth of posts that aren't edited and posted yet, it looks like this piece will turn out to be a novelette/novella. And strangely I'm ok with that. In fact, I think this is a good thing, as it means that I have something of a concrete plot, a goal and a plan, and one of my larger concerns/worries at the moment is that I feel like I have weak/cerebral plots. [1]

The problem with this is that the idea that this was a long term project was one that I was pretty fond of, and it means that I have to think about starting a new project sooner than I had planned. I think I'm going to go back and write a prequel to Knowing Mars that I sketched out and then put on the back burner, (because it's a cool story, and because someone asked for it.) And I want to work on getting more Station Keeping nailed out. I have about half to three quarters of the second (new!) season of station keeping to write. The third season, I plan to write as a single script [2], possibly in conjunction with script frenzy, and that's what I want to write more, but I need to get everything setup for that first.

But these are all shorter term projects (which is odd, given that I don't think of myself as being incredibly useful or coherent with fiction under 25k words.). And not only that, but they're old shorter term projects. While Trailing Edge is new (though connected to previous projects) and the KM prequel is newish, it's an elaboration on something old. Station Keeping, is basically something I came up with during my junior/senior year of high school. Knowing Mars itself is reasonably new, but it grew out of an outline (that I didn't realize was an outline at the time) that I wrote even earlier. Though I'm not sure what form it will take, I'm itching to work on something new. For some reason I've been completely enraptured by concept ships and I have a couple of ideas that might work in a gritty space-opera-style world.

But that's all a ways off, and it's not the doing as much as the amorphous uncertainty that surrounds the future of my writing projects. I said at the onset that this was both a post about writing uncertainty (as above) but also personal uncertainty. And I have enough of that too: my current work contract is up, and while I'm employable enough and I have a few prospects nothing is nailed down. Same about school: it's becoming increasingly clear to me that when I go back to school it needs to be for something else. For the sake of not being overly confessional, I'll spare the details, but I think it's at least passingly interesting that the feeling of being snagged by the in between works in parallel for the "life stuff" and the "writing stuff."

Knowing is half the journey. Onward and Upward!