‘Tis the season to be writing!
Dayjobbery is pretty much finished until after Christmas — yay! — and this morning I did the final edits on ‘Drinks and Measures’, a Regency fairy story I’ve been working on for the past few of weeks. It’s full of wigs and frocks and food and manors (and manners!) and mischevious creatures — SO much fun to write! I’ve been reading a fair bit of Regency fiction recently (Georgette Heyer, mostly) so the cadences of the piece reflect the old-world style, which (IMO) is crucial when writing this sort of story. Here’s hoping I pulled it off!
And it’s been full steam ahead on Midnight and Moonshine. At the moment, the collection has 14 stories planned and I’ve made a good dint in three of them in the past week or two. Working on an original collection is much like writing a novel: you spend a lot of time industriously plugging away at it without immediate results — and I’m so used to sending short stories off one by one, that it’s good to remind myself that all this quiet work is building up to something big and awesome. This week I’m working on ‘The Third Who Walks With Us’, which features one of our protagonists (“our” of course refers to Angela‘s and mine — I’m not using the Royal “we” here…) and delves a bit further into her psyche.
Meanwhile, I’ve started jotting notes for a new piece. I always write notes by hand — fledgling ideas don’t seem to resonate the same way if they’re saved in Word docs — but then I always compose the story on screen. Brainstorming requires pen, ink, notebooks, scribbles; but stories require the order electronic formatting offers. I need to scrawl like a lunatic when sorting out the plot, character motivations, etc — but I need to be able to cut and paste and delete delete delete when putting the story together.
Lisa L. Hannett 
Ooo, regency fiction. It’s so much fun, and kind of addicting to write. Like “fwee, super awesome!” I love the idea of fairy tales in that context! Plus I have a weakness for putting my favorite characters in over-described outfits I have to slash later. With wigs and jewelry… fun!
Isn’t it just? And I know just what you mean — I had to slash a whole bunch of descriptions from this piece… but they were so pretty! 😉
I feel the same way, when I’m doing the writing, though honestly I’m having some moments when I really need to write longhand or I might not be able to produce anything. The blank screen is sometimes less inviting than the blank paper.
You’re so right: sometimes the blank screen is just mean.