Time to Pare Down my Writing List Again

[aldersprig]

My to-write list has this habit of Expanding and expanding...

Things that WILL stay on the list: Ghost Story, Side Quest, Marked, Submission, tootplanet, and Patreon.

The rest of the list is open for suggestions as below:

Poll #18705 Paring Poll!

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16

View Respondents

What five things should stay on my writing list?

View Answers

Desmond’s Climb
15 (93.8%)

Team Sports
0 (0.0%)

Rin & Girey Drabbles
0 (0.0%)

Cya Stories
5 (31.2%)

Beauty-Beast
10 (62.5%)

The Hidden Mall
8 (50.0%)

The Princess and the Tallest Tower
2 (12.5%)

Kael’s Tower
5 (31.2%)

Return to Sender/Old Debts and Old Favors
0 (0.0%)

Funerary Rites
12 (75.0%)

A Prompt Call
1 (6.2%)

Narnia/A Cat in the Closet
2 (12.5%)

Buffy Goes to Addergoole
3 (18.8%)

Beekeeper
4 (25.0%)

Work on Edally already
4 (25.0%)

What else would you like to see?

View Answers

Edited to add Links!
Desmond's Climb
Beauty-beast
The Hidden Mall
Princess & the Tallest Tower
Kael's Tower
Funerary Rites
A Prompt Call
Narnia (A Cat in the Closet)

Comments

[rix_scaedu]

I have a problem - there are 8 things T want to tick.

[aldersprig]

*giggles* Put the 3 less-urgent ones as a comment?

[inventrix]

I don't know what Team Sports is

[aldersprig]

that thing I was talking about while at the neurologist the other day. Reverse harem.

[kelkyag]

This, yes. I also haven't figure out which thread(s) "Return to Sender/Old Debts and Old Favors" is.

ETA: Heh. 'Swhat I get for not reloading the page before asking. With no explanation no wonder that one has no votes.

[aldersprig]

Yeah, that one hasn’t been posted yet <><

Return to Sender is ah… https://www.pinterest.com/pin/758434393468577592/

[kelkyag]

So that one also has no posted text yet?

(At least pinterest has backed off a little on being obnoxious to the not-logged-in.)

[aldersprig]

(Yeah it’s been getting a little better)

That one also has no posted text yet. It not being voted on may not stop me from writing more of it though.

[inventrix]

Why would people vote for something they don't know and have never heard of, though...? Like, if someone ran a poll asking if you like apples, oranges, cherries, or kabkadines best, you wouldn't vote for kabkadines.

(i.e. I'm kind of wondering why you put them on the poll at all, no one's going to vote for either of them except the box one which I would have but I only had five options to choose from okay)

[aldersprig]

*shrug* Sometimes people vote for things based in interesting-title and anyway, I put everything currently on my to-write list and then some things on there too.

Dunno, didn’t think it through?

[kelkyag]

Thiiiiiiis! Especially when Mme. Author already has too many open storylines.

aldersprig, I encourage picking some stories to follow through until they actually wrap up, rather than hopping between active stories, and go for short self-contained stuff when you need more variety rather than opening even more ongoing threads. I have friends who won't pick up a *finished novel* if it's part of an unfinished series, nevermind an open-ended serial. How am I supposed to share the shinies when *nothing ends*?

Umm. Done whining for now. :}

[inventrix]

If you only knew how many ongoing threads were because her readers wanted her to continue what were supposed to be one offs... XD

Also your friends are weird. >.>

[kelkyag]

Oh, there are certainly some of those, and I'm guilty of encouraging some of them, but I think aldersprig writes (well, posts) far more dangling beginnings than actual tied-off one-ofs. "Warning: cliffhangers" still applies. :)

My friends are opinionated, yes, sometimes with quite good reason. [Ranting elided]

[inventrix]

Their loss, then~

[kelkyag]

Or gain. There is no shortage of things out there to read, and they can be frustrated by different things about their reading material of choice than I am. :) I also admit selfishness in wanting more local folks to talk in person with about things we are reading.

Inasmuch as aldersprig is still in the word-of-mouth phase of gaining readership, it is also her loss, but I am not anything like a trendsetter to claim that it is any sort of sizable loss.

[inventrix]

I think you're making the minor error that I actually care about your friends reading Lyn's stuff when in reality I was continuing to reply because you tried to use my comment as a springboard for an opinion which I do not share, despite your initial implication that I did. >.>

My responses thus far are light, non-serious, and slightly facetious, while yours are increasingly soapboxy and defensive, so I am forced to conclude that you have not realized I don't actually give a flying rat's ass and thus I am spelling it out for you and anyone else who happens to fall into this increasingly tiresome comment thread: I don't give a flying rat's ass.

[aldersprig]

I’m going to point out that sometimes I think something is over and people say “no, want more.”

And writing one-offs is - well, like Inventrix said below.

[kelkyag]

It's true, sometimes the readers want & ask for more of a character, or world, whose story has wrapped up, or wasn't intended to be more than a vignette. (Certainly something I've been guilty of. I'm learning not to. "Nice intro" is approaching being a snarky comment, from me.) You can say no! But you seem to write cliffhangers without noticing, too.

That said, all five of the (currently) top pieces in your poll are recently-started and certainly looked like intros-not-oneffs as initially posted. (There were other intros-not-oneffs introduced in the same time range, IIRC, including one in parallel with Desmond's Climb.) Then there are four older ones that were left as To Be Continued long enough ago for people to be forgetting them, one new one single-segment that *could* claim to be a vignette but also ended on a "what happens next?", and two unknowns. "Rin & Girey drabbles" and "Cya Stories" are both in older spaces with a bunch of dangling threads and varying numbers and degrees of frustrated fans; those are the only ones on the list I'd blame "us" for, and that only in part. I don't expect "drabbles" would result in the initial Rin&Girey novel being finished, edited, and made available, which is what I, at least, am waiting on there. And eyeing the will-continues, as far as I know those were all created as ongoing, too.

The Edally and Addergoole novels are the only long pieces with endings, and even those have sequels in queue, and sprawling pieces all over for the latter. (Which is not my cuppa, so maybe it also has actual thread endings in proportion to to its thread beginnings that I am oblivious to, but given the temporal & character scope of the stuff that gets cross-posted, my impression is that the early-years novels are extended character intros.)

... apparently I was not done whining and/or ranting. <looks faintly guilty> <considers reassigning herself to "not the test audience">

[aldersprig]

I don’t expect “drabbles” would result in the initial Rin&Girey novel being finished, edited, and made available, which is what I, at least, am waiting on there.

I’m just going to answer this point here

right now, R&G is in a panic cycle with no feedback except “finish it.” So what I need to do to get back into it is - well, write in it, not edit in it. You’re not the only one that wants it done, I am just not sure yet what “done” will look like.

[kelkyag]

I do realize things wedge and need to sit and age sometimes! The creative process can be super-frustrating. I can offer beta-reading and continuity checking, but don't know that either would be helpful for its current state. (I recall a fair bit of discussion when it was active about how things fit together, but more small-scale than big story arc.)

Why panic rather than just giving it time and perspective?

[aldersprig]

Why panic rather than just giving it time and perspective?


Because my brain is sort of prone to do that when a project sits for too long <.

[kelkyag]

Oh, yes. The old lurking tasks on my to-do list are much more intimidating than the new ones. :-/

Is there any thing we-your-troublesome-readers can do to help, or at least hinder less? Offer encouragement? Pretend anything not actively being worked on doesn't exist? Alpha or beta read?

[clare_dragonfly]

I thought Senga & Erramun wasn't on the list at first and got freaked out. You call it Funeral in the posts, not Funerary Rites :-P

[aldersprig]

oh! The tag is Funerary Rites <.< Sorry!!