WIPs and Chains

I did it!  I finished my WIP! Feels so good, because even though I know it's crazy, I'm still afraid I'll never be able to do it again. I wonder if that will ever go away. I spent the last week going through it and tweaking things here and there and now I have set it aside to rest for a while. I always need some time away from it and then I go back to it with much clearer eyes and can see things I didn't see before. I have tentatively titled this story One Wicked Night. It started off to be a hot little M/M/F novella and turned into 60,000 words about a complicated dysfunctional family. Go figure.

What was interesting (to me anyway, which means you all get to hear about it!) is that I did very little planning for this story. Usually I know what word count I'm aiming for and at what word count I should be hitting a turning point, and my turning points are all planned out ahead. I didn't do that this time. And I loved it. Which goes to show - once a pantser always a pantser, I suppose. Although I do love planning, for some reason it takes the fun and the joy out of the actual writing process for me. I love to just get into the characters heads and see what happens. I think I must keep this lesson in mind for future. Another interesting thing is that I still manage to get the stuff in there that needs to be in there. When I'm done I look at what the turning points should be and what the crisis for the main characters will be and I write down some points that need to be covered - and when I did that and went back through the MS - they were already there! I love it when that happens!

Okay enough rejoicing. Now I must decide what to work on next. I have several projects started that I can go back to and one fresh idea percolating in my head...