Writing, and plans for writing

I have written very little in a long time. But today I started working on something new, and I have a plan to get another (related) thing that I wrote a while ago ready to submit.

The older thing is a bit of steampunk-esque whimsy that I started as an experiment in voice, and found I rather liked. As it grew, I realized that it was longer than a short story, and a market I was interested in was about to open to novella submissions, so I thought I’d just let it grow.

One thing I do when I’m writing is to just drop bits in that seem cool, as possible set-ups for later bits. This often works out very well. Sometimes, though, those bits of set-up imply stuff that doesn’t get written. That happened this time, and I made a list of bits that either needed the follow-up stuff written, or else be deleted.

Since I was aiming at novella length (and I wasn’t there yet), I figured that I could just write those bits out. But several didn’t end up working out. So now my plan is to make another pass through the planned novella, delete the bits that didn’t go anywhere, turn it into a novelette, and get it submitted somewhere.

But that is all work for another day. Today I’ve started on something new: a sequel to that story. I remain delighted by the characters, by the steampunky world, and by the voice I used to write the story. And yesterday I came up with part of a new idea.

Just now I jotted down a few sentences, which I very much hope to get back to later today.

This picture has nothing to do with this post. I just wanted the post to have a picture, and this is the picture I took this morning.