So I finished up the first Captain Arcolier story and posted the final installment yesterday. What does that mean for fiction on this site moving forward? A few observations would be in order. I enjoyed writing it, and I'm sure I'll write more like it in the future but not everything came out as planned.
1) The serial format shaped the piece. This is sort of a "well duh" point, but it is worth pointing. At the end I don't have a ten thousand word short story, I have a nine piece web serial which only works well in the serial format. I don't see this as a particularly good or bad point, just that it is it's own format - and one that is pretty non-commercial at that.
2) I shouldn't post any parts of a serial until I have the whole freakin' thing written. I thought starting the "post every Tuesday" rule would give me a deadline and help trigger creativity. In fact it did the opposite. I found that weekly deadline oppressive - there are episodes that I'm not happy with that got posted anyway. There were days where I was scowling at the screen at 11 PM on Tuesday and hating what I was trying to do. There were weeks where I missed having a post, and that really backfired as I had to break past the guilt and self-recriminations before I could get back to writing. (If you look back I think I never missed just one week. Once I missed a week it snowballed and even cut down on my volume of other blog posting.)
3) I think Captain Arcolier was specifically created as a "this is a creative break from other writing", and I enjoyed writing those earlier pieces and I think they read better. Once we got into a territory of having an even part-time "day job" and a mode where I had to write Captain Arcolier to meet a deadline, she lost some of the magic. I need to get another writing project rolling and then see about occasionally visiting a silly web serial as a way to relax and stretch some writing muscles.
So short term, I have no promises about more fiction appearing here. In the super short-term I'm going on a vacation soonish, so the site will probably seem a little fallow for a couple of weeks here. (Yes, yes I hear you in the peanut gallery saying "How will we tell the difference?" A jovial "go screw yourself" in return :-) ) But I'm sure fiction will appear here in the future.
1) The serial format shaped the piece. This is sort of a "well duh" point, but it is worth pointing. At the end I don't have a ten thousand word short story, I have a nine piece web serial which only works well in the serial format. I don't see this as a particularly good or bad point, just that it is it's own format - and one that is pretty non-commercial at that.
2) I shouldn't post any parts of a serial until I have the whole freakin' thing written. I thought starting the "post every Tuesday" rule would give me a deadline and help trigger creativity. In fact it did the opposite. I found that weekly deadline oppressive - there are episodes that I'm not happy with that got posted anyway. There were days where I was scowling at the screen at 11 PM on Tuesday and hating what I was trying to do. There were weeks where I missed having a post, and that really backfired as I had to break past the guilt and self-recriminations before I could get back to writing. (If you look back I think I never missed just one week. Once I missed a week it snowballed and even cut down on my volume of other blog posting.)
3) I think Captain Arcolier was specifically created as a "this is a creative break from other writing", and I enjoyed writing those earlier pieces and I think they read better. Once we got into a territory of having an even part-time "day job" and a mode where I had to write Captain Arcolier to meet a deadline, she lost some of the magic. I need to get another writing project rolling and then see about occasionally visiting a silly web serial as a way to relax and stretch some writing muscles.
So short term, I have no promises about more fiction appearing here. In the super short-term I'm going on a vacation soonish, so the site will probably seem a little fallow for a couple of weeks here. (Yes, yes I hear you in the peanut gallery saying "How will we tell the difference?" A jovial "go screw yourself" in return :-) ) But I'm sure fiction will appear here in the future.