Starting to feel like it's real

"The Lyons' Den" has finally begun to take on the aura of reality, making me glad I kept going with it even as it just lay there, refusing to even so much as sigh in response to anything I was doing to it.  Hmm...that sounds a bit more symbolic than I intended.  But it does indicate the relationship an author has with his writing.  It really is almost like sex.  Or maybe some heavy-duty flirting.

Consider this scenario -- you see someone you like in a dark room, make eye contact, get closer, chat the person up and try to see if there's something more to be found there than just a moment's conversation.  And sometimes it leads to more talk over drinks...or dinner...or a roll between the sheets.  And then comes the time when you decide whether of not that rolling around could lead to something long-term.  Problem is, nine times out of ten you find you were just momentarily infatuated and it's best to get the hell out.

Of course, I don't do that...the last part...get the hell out when it's obviously best to.  I try to make it work, and try and try.  And sometimes it DOES come together.  And leads places that're surprising.  "Darian's Point" was like that.  I wrote my first (really awful) draft in college and tried to get it going but couldn't figure out the hook, so I set it aside for a decade then was talked into going back to it and wound up not only pulling together an award-winning Gothic-horror script, I also had two other parts of the story make themselves a part of my world.

Same for "Place of Safety".  I first conceived of this story as a script that exploded WAY beyond the boundaries of screenwriting and became more and more demanding, to the point I fought with it and Brendan and everything about it...but never gave up on it and now I'm slowly nearing the first full draft of the story.  And there are sections of it I am already damned proud of.

At the same time, I have another story that just will not come together in enough of a right way for me to make sense of it, no matter how hard I try.  "Delay En Route."  Parts of it are good, but I can't find the linkage to get it to work.  Tho' I've lately begun to think I should set it in 1983, back when America was ascendant, again.  (I hate saying that because Reagan's policies have borne such hideously bad fruit, but that is how the country felt, back then.)

I dunno...I guess we all want whatever we start doing to work out right.  But then...this mental and emotional process is exactly what Daniel is going through, at the moment, and Ace's little commentary is helping keep it in perspective, beautifully.  I'm up to 29,000 words and beginning to think maybe, just maybe, I will make the 50K.  Wouldn't that be a shock to the system?