The joys of writing.... agonies of creation, more like it.

Half of what most 'writers', quotes intended (and I am part of that category), create is sheer crap.

You spend hours working on outlines, because folks tell you it leads to better stories, and find that all it did was waste your time, being that detailed. Or, you ignore it, and get some wandering thing that never hits the tone, pacing, or ending you envisioned. How more folks do not claim to edit with a chainsaw, I have no clue.

I am learning, slowly, to just accept the fact that I cannot work from an outline. Once the damned thing is done, I want nothing to do with the story, not from boredom or realizing it is crap, just from sheer feeling inside me that a detailed, scene by scene outline, with tons of notes in the right places, leaves my creative side feeling "good, we're done here, let's move on".

When you do move on, the seat of the pants side kicks in, ignores or only vaguely follows that clearly marked trail, and wanders through the wilderness around the main way you intended to follow. Or says "The grass is greener the other side of the continent, pal" and takes off on some flight of fancy.

Worse, the characters cut out when you did outline, trim, redact, reboot, outline again, prune with a bulldozer and said chainsaw, then try to go on, come whining in your head like needy children.

Case in point. Billenius likes to feel he is my only character, and should be in every story, even ones he has no business being in, at least, the fantasy ones.

He crept into Crossing, which I was fine with, slithered into a Gyevo story yet to be told, which is why he wound up blind (thought that would teach him, shows what I know), and then, last year, tried to shoehorn his whole entourage into the rewrite of Predator's Ground. And, at first, I let him, figuring "fix it in the edit, threaten him with losing more important body parts". Nope. When I drew a line, trying to fix what I had, taking only three characters, to explain their pasts before Journey to Freedom, this character has been tossing a hissy fit, popping story lines that are not even close to his timeline, into my head all morning as I steam-cleaned a carpet.

So, the question now is, should I toss him into the long term freeze pit, or let him have a tale beside it, just to keep my sanity? Yes, sanity, you have no idea how jarring it is to find two tales babbling in your head at once.