Stuck, but not stuck, just kind of stalled.

Need an unstuck day.  A day to play around on graph paper and doodle.  To poke at high idea generators with a stick, and then have the low idea generators to poke back at me with crit and thoughts.  Time to play around with plot lines and theme and other creative hiccups.

Hail, mistress of the end of the middle book blues!

I'm not actually depressed about this, just irksome in that I want to make shiny things now, and I am full of "MEH" at where to go next.

Did figure out that the chosen few are only for the actual operation, and the children of the movement will be providing distraction and destruction duties.  Think WIPO mayhem.

I want to make this glitter and gleam.

(an aside:  I have a perfectly formed idea for a 6-9 panel comic about elisem's jewelry from the PoV of a bead.  Wish I could draw :| )

Someone asked during VP, and I thought it was an illustrative question. "How many stories are you working on?"

This to me, really helps cement the concept that you just won't/can't base a career on writing off of one submission. It's a numbers game, baby. Submit and learn and grow. Iterate. Eventually your craft level will rise. I think most of my fellow VPXers are at a point where that next level is in sight if not just a finished novel away. hirez and mac, I'm lookin at you here. At the end of the week, I could see the difference between what I had and what Patrick was talking about re: "sparkle". Can't explain it, but I can "see"/read it. Make your stuff differentiate under pressure from vanilla "extruded sf/fantasy matter".

This segues nicely into where I am with those aforementioned stories. In no particular order, using current names of protags:

Jonah - YA spaceship sf. (complete 1st/2nd draft, VP submission, needs work for sparkle level) ~65k
Kaleb - Far-future non-singularity. Not YA. Current WIP, will most likely work on it for NaNoWriMo. ~5k WTD
Arik - Last year's NaNoWriMo novel, possibly YA, fantasy. Needs work. Bones and tendons there. ~70k WTD, needs +10-20k
Trasten - near-future sf. Cyberpunk. Needs another craft level before I re-tackle. ~20k WTD
Gavin - modern era magical realism I guess. Needs another craft level before I tackle. love the story, want to pull it off right. ~10k WTD
Perry - my whimsical short story character. ~5k WTD
Whistler - early attempt at post-apocolypse sf pieces. ~10k WTD