The best laid plans ...

I had this really good plan. I was humming along this week, what three posts in a week? For me, that is really really good.

Anyway, my plan. I was trying to muster up some courage to post some fiction on the blog, finally prove to you that I really am writing, well I mean writing something other than this blog. I had a story I started a while back. Okay truth, I started a long while back, over a year ago. I started it and was in love with my protagonist. I loved the voice I thought she had.

Another person read what I had started with and felt the voice was too ... I don't know, too southern? Too affected? Whatever. Having little confidence in myself I started to change it. The story itself was there still and I was still writing but with every passing day I felt myself moving further away from where I had meant to go. Changing the voice changed the story, it no longer felt like it made sense and it had gone off on some path I couldn't even explain.

So I put it down. Hating what it had become and not liking it enough to keep working on it. I don't blame the other person. They may have been right, they may have been wrong, but the one thing I'm starting to feel certain about is that I have to trust my own gut. If I think I want to write in a certain voice or style then thats what I should write. If it needs to change when I'm all done and editing so be it, but the voice that was speaking to me I stopped listening to.

Back to my plan. So I asks myself, "self, what fiction you gonna post on your blog, huh?" Oh. That. Yeah, what fiction am I going to post.

I opened up the file folder and pulled out the story from over a year ago. I took only the first page, the first page from the first draft in the original voice I had written it in and I started over. The voice had changed slightly, mellowed some but it started to speak to me again and it felt like I had taken off.

But here's the rub (didn't you know there would be one?). I started thinking it was meant to be a short story, maybe a very short story or flash fiction. That took the pressure off me to feel like it was too big a project to tackle, and a short short story or flash fiction would fit nicely in a blog post. But that dang protagonist won't shut up. She's still yakkin' away at me. I'm way past flash fiction and way past short short story. I'm not sure where it will end. A long short story? A novella? A novel --- well probably not but who knows?

So here I am apologizing once again, no fiction posting this week. If this story keeps moving along and getting longer I'll try and post some other fiction or maybe a piece from the memoir next week. But for now I don't want to tempt the fates, this is just too good, haven't felt this good about writing in a very long time.