> > Do you work on more than one story at a time, so if you get bored with one you can work on another? And do you ever finish one of your stories beautifully, but you're still in the mood to write for it and you want to work on the sequel post-haste (and you have a bajillion ideas for said sequel), but you KNOW you have other stories that you REALLY need to write?
>
> I can't imagine there is any earthly reason you "need" to write stories that aren't immediately grabbing your attention.
>
> False starts are a fact of life for budding authors. It takes a lot of self-exploration, more than you'd think, before you can figure out for yourself what stories are merely interesting to you and what stories are interesting enough to you to hold your interest throughout the intense process of writing.
>
> If a story loses your interest half way through, and you just can't build the interest back up to finish it, drop it. Keep it for later, in case the interest returns, and for you to look back upon nostalgically in later years, but don't expect to do anything with it again. Find another story you're more interested in.
>
> It takes a lot of work to figure out what stories and what genres will hold your interest long enough.

I think you're right. The story that's giving me the biggest problem is a fantasy thing, and I've discovered I'm mostly good at science fiction. FUNNY science fiction, that is. My serious stuff doesn't always make it.
>
> As for friends waiting patiently to find out what happened, eh. The mistake was in showing them an unfinished work. On a brief trip to fanfiction.net, I noticed this was done all the time. Practically every writer there was publishing chapters as they wrote, and attaching little notes like, "Don't worry, things will pick up in the next chapter." Bad practice. Not only does it write you into a corner in the sense that you can't revise earlier chapters, but it opens you up to the problem you have now. Not that this advice helps you now.

Eeesh. *Quartz's mind harkens back to the dozens of posts she's seen on the writing website with bad spelling and grammar, but hey, it's a kid's website after all!*
>
> > 1. I don't REALLY want to write for those stories now, I but know that real published, professional writers have to work under deadlines and such. Maybe I should stop whining and get back to work.
>
> Published authors have generally, by that point, figured out what stories and genres they are most passionate about. And where an author might misstep, the threat of an actual deadline takes them the rest of the way. Let's face it, if the stakes are such that your options are "eat" or "breach a legal contract," this is sometimes better motivation than passionate inspiration.
>
> > 2. I have NO idea what's going to happen next in those stories. None.
>
> Generally this is bad too, and it explains why you got stuck. I've tried writing short stories blindly, and typically what happens is that I conclude the piece of writing before I even *get* to a plot. (Consequently, these pieces, strange as it sounds, are a weird source of pride with me. They aren't stories. They are exercises in establishing vivid characters and settings and illustrating obscure little truths of life. Granted, that probably only I would ever appreciate, but so what?)
>
> I don't believe you need to have every step of the plot mapped out in your head before you start writing (although that's usually the best way to do it), you should at least have an idea of where you're going before you start writing. If all you have is the basic idea of the climactic scene, including not just the culmination of a plot but the personal decisions the characters are faced with, then that might be enough. Because then when you start to write, you are writing with a goal in mind, and your words will be geared toward a discernible, tangible end. If your ideas for the story come along after you've started, the beginning of what you write is likely to be waste. Either you retroactively fit ideas to what you had already written (in which case it is almost certain those ideas could have been done a greater service by approaching them in a manner specifically designed to do best service to those ideas, rather than in a way that randomly services them) or your ideas have nothing to do with what you've already written, in which case the beginning is waste.

I never know what the ending's going to be in my stories, but I usually have ideas, which spark other ideas, which in turn spark still more ideas, etc., until I think of the solution. I'm just...stuck. And my mind refuses to think of ideas for this story.
>
> Uh. Hopefully that made sense, but I'm not about to proofread it.
>
> > PS: The hero of my SF parody is named Rock Fiasco.
>
> That name unequivocally RULES.

Oh, pshaw. I think that's one of the best names I've invented.

Quartz
~~*Q*~~