Writing & Storytelling: After a Rough Start, I’m Finally Starting Project X: A New Story Coming Soon…*

* Just don’t ask me to define “Soon.”

Well, Dear Reader, it’s official. Yesterday afternoon, despite feeling foggy-brained from lack of sleep and no small amount of writer’s jitters, I tapped out the first 400 words of the new story – Project X, so-called. (Of course, that’s not the real title. Not even close.)

Since this is just the first draft, what I have on paper – actually, digital code in a Microsoft Word file – is not very good. It has some cool ideas, yes, some of which you already know because I’ve asked for reader input about the names of an important setting – the Moonglow Club – and one of the characters. Remember those two polls I posted a few weeks ago? They were to help me decide on those names for this story.

Most of the other stuff, though, I’m keeping those to myself. I don’t want to give away so much information about the story that by the time I publish it, you folks will say – and probably rightly so – “Why should we buy this? We’ve already read most of it on your blog!”

And in any case, even if that doesn’t happen, rough drafts are called “rough” for a reason. I am not precisely typing up a storm and producing 1000 words a day, and some of the stuff I have in the Project X file shows promise but is still “not ready for prime time.”

Nevertheless, I started the damn thing, and now the challenge before me is to keep writing till the story reaches the point at which I can type “The End.”