The Vagaries of Writing

I do not write like many other writers. Many people are advocates for the write-every-day-no-matter-what method and more power to them. I can't do that. It's not laziness on my part, though, of course, I am lazy. I literally cannot write like that because my brain works differently than normal people. While I go through my day to day reading and workin' and blogging and reading blogs, and otakuing, and watching kids and stuff, my subconscious takes everything I'm exposed to and plays with it, tweaks it, fillets it, combining it with work I started but that petered out or was going in the wrong direction, and ideas I've had that I haven't quite figured out what to do with.

Then, most likely when I'm desperately busy with something, it will push out the new story and say, "Write this, write this now" and I'll be filling every free minute (and not so free minute) with writing and crafting and putting down dialog and refining a few details my subconscious left so my conscious mind wouldn't feel useless. The good news is that it will come out (based on the last four works) pretty clean, with perhaps a little rearranging and a bit of polishing but really not requiring a serious overhaul. And, as I write it, I'll love it like I'm my own fan, tickled at my own jokes and falling in love with this or that character. It's sadly narcissistic but there you have it.

It's, in fact, very gratifying to write that way...except, in between these sessions where I'm all but hemorrhaging fiction, I have nothing to write and feel a bit useless. This is compounded by the realization that my subconscious is clearly working on something but, and this is the kicker, I have no idea what it might be. It could be something I started that needs to be finished. It could be the next sequel in my Bete novel series. It could be my husband's novel he's been wanting me to finish for some bloody time now (though that's partially his fault - we've written nearly 200,000 words on it, but we have to keep starting over as his idea grows up). It could be a couple of the ideas I've been kicking around that I think have promise.

Or it could be something completely different, something I hadn't even thought of. So that all the work I have languishing will continue to languish as I gush over something completely unexpected (which happened last time). Pity really. I like much of the stuff that's languishing, but I'm afraid to tackle it without my subconscious (which does the GREAT writing) in case it gets all uppity and refuses to help at all. Which it is prone to do. Sigh.

It could just be that my subconscious wants me to start actively marketing the work it's already done. Which is actually a good idea.

Sigh again.