| Subject: A landmark passes |
Author:
Wes
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Date Posted: 20:33:45 10/17/11 Mon
The uploading of Chapter 16 of Picking Up the Pieces Sunday night is a landmark of sorts.
My writing sometimes tends to be off and on. I got to about the point where Chapter 16 ends one night in late 2005, and went down to the office the next night to work on it some more. I sat down at the computer and just didn't feel like writing that evening. Or the next evening. In fact, it was almost two years before I could work up the enthusiasm to go back to it, and at that I stalled again for several months after a few chapters. I had a pretty good idea of where the story was going, but I just couldn't work up the interest to do it. Granted, I had a few other things going on during that period, such as my father's death and a move, but the big reason for lack of progress was just lack of interest in writing.
But all the while, I knew I had a pretty good story hanging unfinished. I went back and re-read what I had done several times, liking it and thinking I ought to sit down and finish it, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I started a couple other stories in that period, but couldn't finish them, either. Finally, I sat down one evening determined to peck away at it, and managed to do it. What's more, when it was done I sat back down and started a new story, and a new series at that. That's a story in itself that I'll tell when the time comes.
It was about that period I also started the Spearfish Lake Tales web site, digging into the collection of stories I'd built up over the years. It seemed like it would take years to post all that I had on file, and with that chapter of Picking Up the Pieces, I've finally reached that point. Generally speaking, most everything I had in the queue when I started Spearfish Lake Tales has now been posted. Granted, there are still a couple pre-dry spell stories waiting to be posted, but I've also put up a couple post-dry spell stories to balance things out. Right at the moment, I have stories waiting in the queue for posting to keep going until early 2015, so there's going to be plenty to read for the next few years.
I might as well say that it's going to be a while before there's another Bradford Exiles story. I have one completed one left, but it's set several years after Picking Up the Pieces. I hope to place a couple in the intervening period before I post that one -- which needs some serious work, anyway. I have a couple brief starts on follow-up Bradford Exiles stories and a couple ideas for further ones, but I don't know if or when I'll get to finishing them. I haven't done any work on the Bradford Exiles in years, and it's hard to get back in the mind set when I have newer ideas and newer series to work on.
In the next year I'll be introducing two new series. The first of that series touches lightly on Bradford, and then well before the Class of '88 kids were born; the rest of the series is set in Bradford, but mostly with new characters. In the other series we'll be going back to Spearfish Lake, sometimes with characters familiar from the Bradford Exiles, but more often with newer ones. Because of the way the existing Spearfish Lake and Dawnwalker stories are interrelated, they've tended to get stuck in the 2000-2002 period. The new Spearfish Lake books will get out of that rut; in fact, the most recently dated one is set partly in 2011, although it'll probably be another few years before that gets posted.
All in all, there's lots of new stuff to come, and some of it, I think, is among the best writing I've done. There still are more stories to tell, and I plan on telling them.
-- Wes
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