The Squared-Off Sine Wave

I forgot to do a status update in June, so this will be a two-month report. So, yeah, I haven’t written much. :) I’ve been playing The Secret World and Rift and rebuilding my computer and watching tv and other non-writery type things. If I had a deadline coming up and an editor or an agent or something like that depending on me, they would probably be quite distressed over it.

I think if one were to make a graph of my self-motivation, it would look a lot like a squared off sine wave. Like this: Hey this is cool. This is awesome! This is awesome! This is awesome! Hrm, this isn’t so great after all. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks.

I’ve repeated that cycle a million times in my life with all manner of different hobbies and tasks. Usually the “this is awesome” parts are longer than the “this sucks” parts but that’s not always the case.

Anyway, the bottom line is that the “Curses” project is on permanent hiatus. I like the basic concept but nothing about the characters or story is appealing to me anymore. Maybe those curses will turn up again somewhere else.

I still have a little over three months before NaNoWriMo, which is plenty of time to write 100k words or so. However, I have little to no idea what to write. I have no settings, no plots, and no characters.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I *do* have a setting, which I have dubbed “Airworld.” And I have recently been looking at the War of the Spanish Succession as a template for an epic story.

But considering my project failure rate is nearly 100%, my ego is pretty shaken right now. Kubak, Tel, and Neofuel all have fatal flaws that must be fixed in time-consuming rewrites. Should I go back and fix them? Or soldier on with new material?

Unfortunately for me, I think the correct answer is to soldier on with new material.