Best of 2013 - Nailpolish Stories

I was excited to find out that my story, China Doll, was selected as one of 2013's best stories over at Nailpolish Stories, where all the stories are exactly 25 words and all the titles are polish colors.

I'm hoping 2014 is a good year for writing and stories, too. So far, it's off to a great start!

Over the Cliff I Go

Thank you to everyone who took the time to comment on last week's IWSG: Path or Cliff? post, where I dithered about which writing project to work on next. As you can see from the title of this post, I went over the cliff and went with the "Ugly Horror Manuscript" now known as UHM….

I greatly appreciated all your thoughts, advice and encouragement, and I feel better, more ready, to aid my protagonists in their fight for survival and to grapple with my nasty protagonist and her cohorts. 

I do have two questions/issues/problems to pose to all of you wise ones out there:

1) Is it weird that I don't have an ending in mind? I usually do, and it's kind of freaking me out that I don't this time. I have scenes that happen toward the end but that's it. Do you usually know your ending before you write? Or do you discover it as you go? 

2) I recently downloaded Scrivener, and I'm looking forward to playing around with it and maybe using it for UHM. Do any of you use Scrivener? Any suggestions for how to make the most of it? Would it be better to use it for a fresh, new ms instead of one that's already got a few versions written plus lots of notes and scrawls that would have to be entered into Scrivener? 

IWSG: Path or Cliff?

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When I finished National Novel Writing Month in November 2013, my plan was to let the story sit in December then pick it back up in January. I was going to finish it, revise it, edit it, etc then self publish it as a novella either in the summer or fall. It was a reasonable, doable goal, and I was happy with it….

Until a previous manuscript reared its ugly - and I mean, ugly - head and let loose its antagonist. The disdain in that woman's voice for the characters in my NaNo story was so cold and chilling it made me want to crawl in the drawer where those NaNo notes live.

But here's the thing: I don't trust her. I don't trust the manuscript, which I've worked with on and off for years now, or the plot, which is so full of holes I keep disappearing into them. I don't trust that I can tell this story the way it should be told. I'm not sure I have the guts, the nerve, the creativity, the discipline, or whatever else it is that's keeping this novel from being written.

I want to follow my original plan. I want to work on something shorter, more manageable. I want to work toward a clear goal.

But I also want to work on the story that's got me gripped in its talons. I want to spend time with characters who are flawed but make me root for them anyway. I want to feel those heebie-jeebies as the antagonist whispers in my ear, her words like a nasty fingernail trailing up my spine.

So, do I stay on the path and write my NaNo novella? Which, by the way, I do really like. Or do I hurl myself off that same novel cliff I've flung myself off many times already, only to emerge battered and broken and still manuscript-less?

But what if, this time, I actually manage to fly?