Short Stories Make Long Delays

[snarkysedai]

So the little short story I was working on, the AU where Hawke winds up getting pregnant the very first time she sleeps with Fenris, and the shenanigans that happen afterwards, has reached 68,000 words.  I started writing it exactly a week ago, and I've written so much that I've made a short novel out of it, and I'm still not done with the damnable thing.  She's given birth and they've made it back to Kirkwall, but I'm not sure where I want to take it from there.  I did not, unfortunately, map the story out; I just wrote what came to mind.  One of the worst things about me when it comes to writing is that I have a problem wrapping things up.  Now that I've gotten started on this story, I intend to see it ending with the events of DA2, and I'm fairly certain I don't want to stray into Legacy or Mark of the Assassin territory (although Legacy *could* provide some much-needed action for a story that seems to be heavy on the descriptions and dialogue) but other than that, I'm just not completely sure where I want things to end up.

Part of me is regretting some of how I've written it, but there's no way I'm going to delete or change half of that.  I wanted more emotional conflict, but it's just not there, in most of what I've written.  I suppose there's a way I can stray closer to canon (since it's so canon-divergent now) and give it more romantic conflict and drama, along with the usual (fighting, dragons, mass stupidity infecting Kirkwall) but the more I look at this thing, the more I realize that I'm not coming in at under 100,000 words on it.

I'm pretty proud of my three smut scenes; the third one clocked in at over 3,000 words, and it was ridiculously hot IMO (and hopefully others will find it hot, too, or why else write the damned thing?  I think I spent hours blushing after I was finished, nearly afraid to show my face lest I be struck down for it!) but those give me pause and make me wonder if I shouldn't publish it.  The initial goal was to get it out of my head and write a drabble, or something that would wind up being about 10k words.  That it is nearly seven times what I wanted to begin with shows that you can't trust me when it comes to writing and estimating how shortly I can get something written.

Tonight, I'm being struck with a frustratingly absent muse, and I've tried to write more and move the damned plot along, but it seems to be stuck and I'm just not happy with what I'm writing.  I've tried transcribing some more of Hilarity Ensues! from the written notebooks into type, but my liver has been paining me so much that I can't seem to get comfortable and just type. 

So, today I will accept that I am absolutely useless, and hope that tomorrow I will be doing much better.  Perhaps I can get out of the house some; a change of scenery might inspire my muse to come back and infect me with all those words that have to be typed out.  Or maybe not; who knows.

I am very much looking forward to our tax refund, though; I've got plenty of things I want to buy and nothing to buy it with.  I've also got Assassin's Creed, ready and waiting to be played, although I'm not sure if I want to do that yet.  I wish Dragon Age 4 was coming out soon, and I also wish that I had a title for this piece, other than the working title of "How To Tell Him," which I loathe, but I had to save the file as something and that was what it wound up being.

And I'm shutting up now. 

Also, have a picture of me with blue-green hair.
 

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

That is a great picture of you!

[snarkysedai]

Thank you :D

I like the hair. It turns all sorts of different shades of blue in different lights, and kind of sparkles.