Jonathan talks here about trying to come up with a suitably dramatic but inoffensive term for those of us who work from comfy armchairs trying to suddenly do quite a lot MORE than we usually do.

That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing. I have been trying to work on several short stories at once this month, which is surprisingly effective as compared to just trying to work on one – if one stalls, you move to the next, and so on – but is also a real drain on the creative energy. The thing about short stories is – they are actually just as hard as writing novels, but you can’t let your attention span waver, or get into a comfortable pace. There is no comfort in short stories! They’re constantly asking you questions like “but where is the story going?” and “but what is the THEME?” and “how are we going to wind this sucker up” rather than that nice ‘lalalala now you’ve done all the work at the top end we can just continue on under our own momentum for a few months” feeling you get from novels.

I’m going to be starting a new novel soon. I’m really quite excited about it. My brain is obviously very excited about it because it’s all “hey let’s listen to THIS music,” and “let’s daydream about THIS plot,” without actually acknowledging that there’s about another month’s work still to do on BOOK THREE of the Creature Court.

I am not by any means out of love with the Creature Court. But Book Threes are, it turns out, terribly hard and full of enormous pressures, and I am jumping out of my skin with excitement about the fact that I have a new Book One right around the corner.

Soon. Not yet. Soon.

Raeli is back at school, which is lovely for all of us, even if I do have to remember to pick her up at 2:30 every single day. Jem now has one and a half days of daycare a week, which is a profit to me of several hours.

And oh yes, I’m reading, reading like a maniac, gathering great momentum for Last Short Story, catching up on the kind of novel you read in a day or less, ripping through my library stack, and so on.

None of this is in anyway procrastinatory about that last teeny bit of Book 3 that has to be written. Not at all. My brain wouldn’t have any reason for putting off the task I’ve been longing to get done all year, would it?

Bad, bad brain.

Tags: creature court, last short story, reading, short stories, writing