One of the perils of creative work is that ideas, even excellent ideas, are plentiful. Every now and again I’ll come across an author on my social media feeds who’s received a direct-message pitch from a stranger: a devil’s bargain of a free, totally rad idea that the writer can write so long as the pitcher can be credited and ideally reimbursed in some form or fashion. The author, for their part, usually admits that they suffer from a glut of ideas, that if they were to write 18 hours a day for the next twentty years they would scarcely catch up with their current stock. It’s something of a pleasurable peril, I think, as most folks have spells when it feels like the brain has been squeezed dry. Those stretches are, I’m glad to report, invariably temporary, and mindful writers invariably have enough zesty projects to tide them over.

This, alas, explains my current lot, as my brain appears to be stuck in the generative gear. I’m actually pretty good in fixing my noggin on a single notion and seeing it through from start to finish, but I’m also not one to turn the Muses away if they come a-knocking. The big project I’m polishing off is the novel I wrote last fall. It is, I think, nearly there, by which I mean my obsessive tendencies are nearly ready to move on. I plan to give it one last editorial pass by the end of the month, a pass in which I’ll make one foundational change and also lop off a few thousand words to get it down to what I hope will be a more digestible length. After that, it’ll be time to search for representation and start pitching the manuscript hither and yon.

While I was working on the manuscript over the summer, I also finished off a novella, which is currently in the hands of a publisher. Novellas can usually be sent directly in response to open calls, so the process is a little bit different. I also found the length terribly congenial to my way of thinking, plotting, and writing, so my brain obliged me with a string of ideas in rapid succession. Two of the three might well represent a duology, which could make for a pretty palatable single volume of about 60,000 words. The other feels like a much more self-contained experience, and after a couple of false starts I’ve finally settled into the rhythm of that piece and have it properly underway.

While four sizable projects would represent a very full hopper, it’s important to remember that I’m also something of a jackass. I’m also writing a table-top role playing game, and as fate would have it an organizational impasse happened to coincide with the launch of Eloy Lasanta’s six-week course on The Art of Gamecrafting, a joint venture of GenCon and our own CMU Press. I accordingly signed on, which will hopefully help me whip all the bits and pieces into a testable beta version. I’ve gleaned a few key insights from the class already, and I’ve also nearly convinced myself that I need to learn a few more Adobe skills so I can start making fillable character sheets. I’ve done some game writing for the good folk over at Superhero Necromancer before, but this game is very much my own jam, one that’s been ripening in my mind for several months and has a couple dozen moving parts already committed to pixels. I think some of the difficulty I’ve experienced arises from the steady diet of Kickstarters and Patreons I keep an eye on. I’ve run afoul of something akin to a stretch-goal impulse, which means I’m having a tough time sifting out what absolutely needs to be in the core game and what ought to be reserved for addenda, extensions, and optional rules, many of which I already have in mind.

Given my commitments to my teaching, I reckon that’s more than enough projects on the docket, but along the way I’ve also fleshed out synopses for two screenplays. Those probably belong on the back burner of some other stovetop, but I certainly haven’t forgotten about them. And there’s that short story I hope to get done in time for an anthology call, as well as a few revisions and reworks of older story manuscripts I need to attend to. I’m mostly caught up with life stuff, happily (today I was going to get the updated COVID shot, but I decided that I didn’t want to squander an open writing day), so I figured I’d fire off this missive to the blog and then tuck in to one of the above. Like most writing types, I’m very content to have a storehouse replete with options and prospects. But by the end of the semester, with a little luck I’ll be able to pile up some words on the pallets and ship some stuff out.