The only one that's percolating right now is this past NaNoWriMo. Stuff keeps happening to the characters, but I haven't actually written a word of it down.

The SO & I are having Year of the Artist, in which we give each other periodic challenges in various arts (those we are comfortable in and otherwise). His current one for me right now is to write a story in fifteen drabbles. I think I'm going to do the backstory of the NaNoWri 'cause so much of what happens for them comes from the backstory, but it's not all clear to me yet.

Long things that want to be written by me.

The thriller deb and a couple of others have seen the first chapter of.

A potential murder-in-a-small-town series set in a northwestern Pennsylvania town much like the town I went to college in, starring a New York cop turned pre-law professor and his wife, who's head of the Archaeology Dept. Handy when you need bodies discovered in strange places. "Dammit, what's this doing in my dig!"

Another cop story, but this cop is the younger brother of an aging rock and roll star who abandoned the family years before in search of fame and has been trying to mend fences with the family. Unfortunately, the wrong girl died of a drug overdoes at a party said rocker attended, and there's the question of just how closely big brother is trying to live the clean and sober lifestyle. Just imagine seeing your own big brother on a VH1 Behind the Music episode.

This is completely separate from the huge stories that want to be told in fandom.

Well, my dad and my brother are fighting about the nature of their insurance business right now. In the book they are fighting over millions, instead.

Tangentially, I'm an old fan of Jim Thompson 50s potboiler novels. They tend to be very trashy, and about the kinds of people who abscond with $2000 rather than $2 million. I didn't think that world really existed (any more, if it ever did), till I met my aunt's new husband, who is an aging insurance adjuster in Tulsa. Over the course of a fine dinner, he told some of the most hair-raising stories about drama over petty amounts of money, it was like he was a pulp narrator come to life.

If I'd taken notes, I'd have a 5-book deal by now.

The thriller deb and a couple of others have seen the first chapter of

That would be the thriller deb would like to see rather more of, and soon.

I'm not running out on the discussion - we're just out the door until late.

Nutty, can't you remember enough to write some of that? It sounds amazing. I'm thinking intelligent updated feminist Mickey Spillane and I'm salivating.

The thriller deb and a couple of others have seen the first chapter of.

Yes, this! That cliffhanger made me salivate. The others sounds good, too. What are you waiting for you, lady? Gentle nudge...

I have so many stories waiting for time to write them, it makes me nuts. And what makes me even crazier is that they're all very different. In the publishing world today, it seems to be true that you need to establish yourself in one genre (or type of novel) or another before you veer off into other territory, especially if you're writing genre.

But I have another YA series I want to tackle, a mystery series that's more psychological and about character than dead-body focused, a...regular old novel, for lack of a more descriptive term, about a woman and her family and what happens to them in the course of a particular year that makes them examine what they know about each other, and a couple of interrelated historical romances set in Gilded Age Manhattan, as well as three chick-lit type novels.

I need a magical eighth day of the week in which no one is clinging to my knee lisping "juith" or asking where his sneakers are or reminding me that the dry cleaning is due to be picked up...

Over the course of a fine dinner, he told some of the most hair-raising stories about drama over petty amounts of money, it was like he was a pulp narrator come to life.

Sounds like the stories my grandfather used to tell of being a probation officer in Detroit during the Prohibition. Some of the things they did! My grandfather would have these guys who were on probation pull practical jokes on his coworkers. Like hot-wiring their car and parking it two blocks away from where it was originally. Then watching the expression on the guys face when he came out to find his car missing.

My father told us one story of being in a car with my grandfather when he spotted someone who was wanted for a parole violation. Grandpa pulled out a gun and started shooting! With dad in the car! Wheee!

I need a magical eighth day of the week in which no one is clinging to my knee lisping "juith" or asking where his sneakers are or reminding me that the dry cleaning is due to be picked up...

Oh, yeah. Writer's Day, when no one wants your help with something, when no one says "You love the computer more than you love me," when no one needs a backrub because it's the only way he'll go to sleep . . .

Stupid, independent fortune not having.

I would have a hard time being kind to somebody who would tell me I love the computer more than them. But maybe that's why there isn't anybody. But it seems to me there isn't a nice reason to say that.

Men say things to women and to each other, and women do, and why wouldn't something you hear between two living breathing human beings bring you an idea for a situation between two 19th century characters?

But I already do stuff like this. It's just a different part of the creative process than the one where I think, "Aha! I have a novel." That, for lack of a better word, is big-picture stuff, and most of it comes from a combination of my reading of history and a sort of character and situation bank in the back of my mind. Eventually a setting/situation and a character mate and give birth to a baby plot--usually in the form of a vivid opening and a desired end point.

I don't talk as much about other influences because they're on a different level of the process--and they tend to be a bit more personal, sometimes even private. But they're still there.

Maybe you shouldn' thave, because I did your first post to be taking inventory and concluding worrying was in order. You were just wondering how much people had on their back burners, then?

Yes. Exactly. And I guess I need to change the way I communicate or something, because I'm getting pretty angry and frustrated over this stuff. (This is by no means all about this topic or this thread--it's online, real life, etc.) It's like if I use the word "worry" at all, everyone assumes it must be bad obsessive unhealthy worry that's ruining my life and jumps on me about it. And all I meant was some tiny minor niggle that occasionally crops up in the very back part of my mind, not even remotely a big deal. But somebody will inevitably ask, "Why would you worry about that?" which feels like an accusation, and I feel like I have to explain the origins of the niggle, which somehow makes it a big deal that it never was when it was merely one of those little little things I occasionally think about for five minutes and then easily shrug off. It's getting to where I feel like I can't talk about minor worries that are threatening to become big ones to ask for help because it seems like everyone goes into crisis-mode when I use the "w" word, which makes me worry more than I was to start with and/or makes me feel like a freak. And I'm so not crippled by worry. Even when it was a much worse issue for me than it is now, it still never defined me. Not to myself, at least.

That last bit probably belongs in Bitches rather than hear, but I'm going to go ahead and post it, since this is where it came to a head.

Maybe you use 'worry" where you mean merely think. For me, worry has a strong negative and unwilling connotation--no one decides to worry on purpose, after all. If someone tells me they are worried about something (not specifically you--this is anyone) I assume they don't LIKE worrying about it. If they say they are thinking about it, or trying to figure it out, then I will assume that it's something that crossed their mind but doesn't really concern them deeply. Maybe this is just how I use the term, however.