Stuff I’ve Been Working On

Image courtesy of Stockvault.

Besides planting an apple tree yesterday, I’ve been working on a bunch of other projects. So, I’m not making much headway in any single one, but I am making some small progress on a bunch of different things. The quality of the work is better, I think. It helps when I’m in a state where I think every word I type is shit.

First up, I’m back writing sci-fi.
This is kind of a mixed bag, because it feels raw to write it. It hurt having to sack most of what I’d worked on in favor of a better version of the novel. I also have decided that if I can finish this latest version, that’s it. No more major rewrites. When it’s mostly done, I start querying agents.

I’m also hating writing short stories.
Every single one I’ve written is a great idea for a serial story or novel. I can’t condense any of them down to under 5k words. This pisses me off every time I think about it. I feel like a jackass every time I complain about it in my head or elsewhere.

Then there’s this non-fiction thing I’m dabbling in.
The working title is “Christianity For Non-Christians.” There are a lot of books out there that talk about the logical side of Christian beliefs, but I think they’re inadequate with regards to how the faith actually gets promoted. It’s one thing to sit there and piece together a belief in cosmic deities based on the idea’s own merits. It’s a whole other animal when you get social pressure to join or remain in a church, or you get told the introductory version of sin that doesn’t always match the more advanced versions.

Right now I’ve got a rough outline and a few pages written. My interest in the project is mostly therapeutic. Publication is a giant, fearsome thing I wouldn’t want to think about right now. That is, if I was financially independent, I probably wouldn’t have a problem with trying to get it published. As it is, if I did so, I could count on being homeless.

My fantasy and dark fantasy projects are on the back-burner.
Although I do need to work on the dark fantasy more, since I want to use it to grow my author blog. Ideally I’d be able to publish once a week. Practically the deadlines might trigger my anxiety something awful. I can tell that my anxiety isn’t handled because I’m still afraid of possible consequences rather than actual ones.