Project Statuses

I held off on blogging this week because I expected to have something to say after my story was workshopped in class on Wednesday, but I really don't. It was a good workshop, with lots of interesting comments and quite a few helpful ones as well. I'm hopeful about the story but not ready to revise it yet.

I have some essays to write that I've been putting off. For no especial reason, just because I'm kind of pooped mentally. Classes are great and fun, but they tend to demand a similar kind of analysis as essays; plus, my midterm paper for my literature class was due this week, and that took some big (if somewhat indifferent) effort. I wrote about The Sun Also Rises, which I did not like, but about which I was able to develop a coherent theory, which is more than I can say for the other books we read.

There's also this certain story I need to write. It's the last one on the mental tally from January, and when I'm done with it I can set out to write more of the wikibook and/or revise Highbinder, because my story-well will be temporarily empty. The wikibook is an ever-so-slightly higher priority. But none of these three projects is appealing. The certain story promises to be interesting, but not much fun, and I'm a little overwhelmed by the plethora of possibilities for characterization and climax that I could build into it, so I haven't gotten started. The wikibook is just scary, full stop. The Highbinder revisions...I've complained about those adequately elsewhere on this blog.

...I suppose I am

There's also a secret project I conceived in 2011-12 that I'd like to start on this year, but it's kind of...pointless? I don't want to say that, because no creative work is pointless, even if it's just practice. But this is a labor of love and little else, a project that's book-length but with which I don't expect to do much other than write it and set it aside. That makes it feel like a much lower priority than the stuff that I'm writing with an audience other than myself in mind. (I know, down deep, that I must write it, whether its fate is public or private.)

I've been told that, paradoxically, writing worth reading isn't conceived with an external audience in mind. I've been thinking about that a lot as the secret project begins to loom nearer in my future. There are a lot of facets to the writing+audience argument/problem/philosophy, and like I said earlier, my analysis-brain is a bit shagged out at this particular moment. It also feels like a topic that's hard to discuss without offending certain types of writers (whose numbers are large and mighty). So I'll just set it out there and walk away.