It’s a daunting thing when you start writing a story that you spit out chapters where you have word vomit and not sure of where you are going with it as you’re writing at the time. Then other plot bunnies strike and take you elsewhere and you end up putting that story, and/or others on the back burner for undetermined lengths of time. By the time you decide to return to those incomplete stories, you forget what you were doing, wondering what those muses were thinking. Then they get delayed again as you have to sit there, pondering how to continue as you no longer are sure what to do.
You start the next chapter, chipping at it little by little. Never quite satisfied with it to make it post worthy. Mainly because your style of writing has already shifted since you’ve put the story on hold and in order to keep the story consistent, it’s difficult to go backwards in time.
However, you persevere. You press forward, going back frequently to reread previous chapters to get back into the storyline, hoping for new inspiration. As you have fantastic friends who have no issues with kicking you in the butt to make sure you’re doing something and not slacking. By slacking, I mean skipping off and reading other people’s fanfiction and ignoring working on your own. It’s so hard! I mean, there are so many pretty stories out there! Such as last night, I had a hankering for a very specific Elijah!Christmas story and couldn’t remember who the hell wrote it. Of course, the person who wrote this story, I found out is one that I speak to fairly regularly. As I was scowering everyone else’s WordPress pages, not once had I considered looking to hers. I wanted to smack myself. It’s likely because I associate her crossovers with comics more than with The Originals. But, I got my fix and I was satisfied in my Elijah craving, even if I’m more of a Kol and Klaus girl.
Getting back on topic, distractions. Reading other fics are a huge distraction and somehow, by the grace of God, and my friends, you all know who you are, I managed to return to one story and focus in on it enough to write out the final few chapters over the last month. Two of them this weekend alone simply because I have begun my vacation from work so the knowledge that I have no confined timeline as I normally do. I was free to stay up late, or get up as early as I desired to begin writing. With that, I was able to get significant writing completed simply from the evening that I got home from work.
I wrote my submission for Bertie Bott’s Halloween contest. I can’t wait for you all to read that. It is already uploaded to FFnet for when it’s safe to post officially, and ready to go here as well. It’s scheduled to go public on November 1st. Be sure to visit her page on October 23rd to read all the submissions and vote for your favorite!
I’ve posted Chapter 15 of Something to Hope For the other day. And now…I’m giving you Chapter 16, and the final and complete chapter of the story. You can click the pretty to take you to the chapter. I do hope that you all enjoy the ending of the chapter. It has certainly shifted from where I had originally been going when I started the story, but my muses are different now, hence the inclusion of a certain pair of characters.
Until the next post…I’m off to work on the next update.