The Next Starting Line

This week in writing, I finally got it in my head to start project #fellrunner. Which is to say, its due date is next in line, the end of this year.

Theoretically, that shouldn’t be hard. It’s 40,000 words, Micheal, how hard could it be? Especially coming off of a 200,000 word project.

But I am struggling to begin, much like I was way back when I started writing Warmongers (a year ago around this time, wow). Is it because I’m just coming off of a heavy writing jag (I wrote “the end” on Warmongers a few weeks ago), and the launch of two books, and all of my parents visiting for two weeks? That would shatter anyone’s brain space.

Or is it that starting any project is hard?

I know from long experience that I always struggle with any transition period in a work. Changing from project to project, brainstorming to drafting to revising.

This one, in particular, I jave had bouncing in my head for years, but only in the vaguest terms—“MC has to do a fell run to save ___.” And it was the first novella I had in mind when I got my deal with tordotcom. But it was too nebulous then, and so I moved to Fate’s Bane.

And now that it’s had all this time to coalesce…it’s still nebulous!

So it’s the kind of project I’m going to have to find a new way to pin down. Much like Warmongers, it isn’t responding well to my old strategies of outline. Perhaps because of the structural stretches I want to make.

There are, however, things I do know. I want to explore running, and try to make it narratively interesting. It will be a journey. In certain thematic ways, I want it to be the opposite of Fate’s Bane.