Writing means no social life

... and conversely, a social life means no writing.

Monday, admittedly, I was home - but playing Xbox all night. Damn.

Tuesday, a trip to the theatre to see a fantastic version of Strangers on a Train.

Wednesday, a trip to the movies to see No Country for Old Men - not as good as Tuesday, but good.

As such, no writing since... Monday morning, maybe? As a result, a certain part of my brain's starting to get itchy through lack of use.

You see? I knew I wouldn't get that ahead of myself.

When you're in the groove...

... well, you're just in it, I guess.

Issue 16 is at 11,303 words right now, and I added 4,009 of them today. Even while I made time to go to the movies, hang out with friends and cook dinner. Woo! I rock! Ahem.

What's scary / cool is that every one of those 4,009 words is for one scene - one unfinished scene. You'll be glad to know it's a transformation scene. Although it's not what you're thinking... I expect.

So that's the good news. As soon as this scene is done, the issue is wrapped bar the editing, the fiddly document creating, the uploading etc etc yada yada. However, here's the bad news. I won't be posting it until next weekend at least.

Why? Because, despite the fact to my utter astonishment I seem to have finished an issue in five days, I want to keep to this bi-weekly schedule, roughly. If I keep motoring along like this (touch wood) then I'll have issue 17 practically done by the time I post 16. In other words, I want to keep on runnin' and get ahead of myself.

Am I being a tease? Possibly. Is this a sensible tactic from where I'm sitting? Probably. Anyway, for the record, I like this issue better than last... although I have a feeling 'your mileage may vary'.

Great way to finish the weekend, though.

Getting jiggly

The cold's not bad enough to keep me away from the keyboard, but it is bunging my head up and slowing the writing down.

It's also making it harder to plot, and that's unfortunate as I've been jiggling scenes around, adding a couple and generally playing fast 'n' loose with things. This means issue 16 has expanded (in outline, anyway) and I have this nagging feeling the whole of Crossover won't be done until issue 19, perhaps. We'll see.

Also this morning, with some new capturing software, I grabbed and edited a clip together that probably had about as big an impact on the young GW as Betty Brant-as-Spider-Girl did. Ladies and gents, Nicholas Hammond as Spider-Man....

Attack of the Killer Bs

I remember reading some 'advice for writers' somewhere which said that if at all possible, you should try and avoid giving characters the same name - which is generally easy enough to do - and preferably, don't even use the same initial. That's because as we read, we tend to skim names after a while, just recognising the 'shape' of the word. Two many characters with the same initial first letter and people get confused.

Heck, I'm writing the damn series and I get confused when I've got Bruce, Betty, Barbara, Batman and Batgirl to deal with. How are you handling it??

Thanks to each and every one of you who's commented about issue 15 - I really, really appreciate it. I didn't actually think that parts of it were my best (and that last scene I practically had to force myself to finish, for some reason) but I'm very glad you folks dug it.

Now back to issue 16 - about 3K in right now, and I just expanded it with a couple of new 'beats' which I think will be fun. Still hoping to bring it in under 10K, but we'll see. I don't want to make 13K sized issues a habit....

New release: Spider-Girl, issue #15

On the trail of the Chameleon, Betty Brant has travelled to another dimension and landed in Gotham City, home to the vigilante crimefighters, Batman and Batgirl. They too are seeking the master of disguise, although they know him as False Face. The Chameleon meanwhile has allied himself with former district attorney Harvey Dent, AKA Two-Face. None of this concerns Betty Brant right now though, as at Bruce Wayne's invitation, she has a ball to attend as his disguised guest...

Issue #15: The Brave and the Bold

Download from Maskingwriter (Yahoo! Group)

Betty's 'new life' in Gotham City continues to have some interesting twists and turns. What exactly does being Bruce Wayne's date feel like? What is the Chameleon's plan? What secrets does Wayne Manor hold? All these questions and more may be answered in this issue....

As always, if you have enjoyed this or any other issue of Spider-Girl, please click on an ad in the right-hand column for me. Who knows, one day I may even get paid for this gig!

On to a two-week schedule (just) with this issue - wish me luck to continue on it... this is actually the biggest ever issue of the series, although I didn't set out for that to be the case... guess I just got carried away especially at the end. So settle in, get your favourite beverage and enjoy the story... and of course, please let me know what you think of it in the comments below or via email.

Writing projects update... January

So I think I might do these semi-regularly from now on... the first two got a lot of traffic. Hopefully not just from people who are basically not at all interested in Spider-Girl and are looking for other stuff....

Anyway for anyone who's not read one of these before, here's what I'm either thinking about, plotting or possibly even writing at the moment that I'm not talking about extensively. Everything gets assigned a letter, just to confuse me. There's no guarantee anything here will ever see the light of day, but if something catches your imagination... let me know.

Project T hasn't been worked on for a while (bear in mind before I came back to Spider-Girl recently, I hadn't worked on anything since September), but just so you know, it's at just under 50,000 words... and I think could well be double that when it's done. I basically think it's a novel, now. I won't be releasing it until it is done, either - with the exception of serial stuff like Spider-Girl, that has no fixed ending, I'm trying not to release parts of things if they're not finished. Just FYI.

Anyway, the writing of that has been a lot of fun. I got past a major, major scene a while back which had been in my head forever, and when it was down on paper I felt so close to it I couldn't even tell if it was any good. I sent it to an 'independent adjudicator' and I'm happy to report he gave it a glowing report card. So hey, I know at least one part of it is good.

As I've said before, but just for the record, this is a male-to-female story involving bodysuits.

Other stuff I've actually written words for; several years ago Victor and I sort-of collaborated on a story I called Housesitting, which we never finished, although I have about 12,500 words of it done. Frankly I was never that happy with the plot that we came up with, and yesterday I finally re-plotted the whole thing (hence my post on plotting).

I'm a lot happier with the potential for it now; it seems a lot sturdier to me, with some interesting interactions I've never written before. (For 'interactions' you can also read 'sex' if you like.) I can see myself tapping away at this for a bit and seeing how it goes. This is another male-to-female story, but more traditional - a kid imitating his mother using a mask.

I mentioned Love Hotel before... I will finish this one day, but honestly I've got to be in the right mood. What's written of it was done in 2001 in a hotel on a business trip... perhaps the next time I'm alone in a foreign clime with time on my hands I'll get it done. (And I do have a potential trip in the first half of this year....) I'd like to tell you what it involves, but it'd spoil the surprises....

Father Knows Best, some of you will remember I'm sure. (Three parts were released a few years ago, but I never finished it - dammit.) I really want to finish this but I still don't know what the hell the ending is. It might just need a complete re-plotting session, like Housesitting... I'll try and do that, we'll see what I come up with.

Moving on to stuff that's plotted, or semi-plotted, but not written at all... I have a complete outline for what should in theory be a 'short' but knowing me it won't be! Lemme see... I guess that would be Project A, but I know that'll confuse me so let's just give it a working title - Anita. Believe it or not this is a female-to-male story, with some other stuff I won't spoil. Any interest?

What else, jeez... I guess there's Project TNG, which is long, has a very complex plot and would be a huge challenge to write, as previously mentioned. I still don't have an ending for that damn thing so it'll probably stay untouched until I figure that out. It's primarily female-to-female, but has female-to-male stuff in there too.

I mentioned something called Project B before, and just to allow you to connect the dots, that's actually The Babysitter (a working title) which I talked about the inspiration for a little while back. So re-read that post and imagine if you like. (Or even better, suggest your 'Holy cow, my babysitter is actually a masked hottie' fantasies to me and give me some material.)

Project TSL is my serial story, the one inspired by The Black Widow. I do want to do this, but plotting it is actually a lot harder than expected. I will get to it, but the plot needs to be totally done, and I'd be writing it in either 9 or 13 parts, so that's quite a lot of plot. Wait and see.

And finally... Project AC isn't dead, but it sure isn't very alive either. Frankly I can't see myself working on it until Spider-Girl is done... so that's a loooong way away. But never say never. Project G... uhh, we should probably forget about that. It'd be huge, and it's an idea without a story, really, and would need researching and... life's too short.

That's it. If you want to see any other post where I talk about these projects, then helpfully, they're all filed under 'projects'.

Hollywood messes with perfection - again

Why are you so damn arrogant, Hollywood? Why can't you see that sometimes, something is right, and you don't need to change it?

Something like - ooh, say - Black Canary's costume?


On the left: a fan-created costume by the brilliant cosplayers at Gotham Public Works. On the right, a changed-for-no-good-reason costume for the presumably big budget Smallville.

I mean seriously - if you say 'Black Canary' you think 'long blonde hair' (and if you're me, 'long blonde wig') and 'fishnets'. (Yes, I admit they got that bit right.) But you sure as hell don't think 'Stupid domino mask apparently applied using mascara' or 'Short blonde buzzcut'.

Why Hollywood, why? When you were so damn close? Sheesh.

More fugly pictures are at Comics Continuum, if you want to see - the episode, 'Siren', airs in the US on February 7th, and will be at your favourite 'torrent site shortly after.

Finished, and boy did that hurt.

Another issue done. Well, 'done' in the sense that all the words I wanted to put into it (13,059 of them, as it happens) are in it. That said, I haven't re-read it yet for sense or coherency. So sorry, faithful reader - no release today. But soon. By Tuesday, so I can say I'm on bi-weekly schedule, kind of.

As you might have guessed from the post title, this one took a while to finish. For some reason the last scene, a scene that would normally be gravy (a transformation) just took forever to do. I'm not entirely sure why. It might be because I was trying to give it a sense of importance that it didn't deserve. That's kind of hard to gauge though; after all, the transformation bits are generally why you're reading, so I'd imagine your reaction is probably "How could it not be important?"

Eh, I guess the point is when you feel like you've written this sort of thing every single different way you can think of, some days you just want to write "Then they got changed into a different outfit and went on their way". It's not as if I have actors or actresses in front of me giving me visual stimulation... instead it's all in my head, and I've got to make them do interesting things. Otherwise they just sit around with blank looks.

Anyway, it is done, and in the last few lines I threw a wrench in my own plot because I thought it'd be fun. We'll see... Future Ghostly might end up cursing my present self. (See what I meant about foreshadowing and plotting?)

Right. I feel like rambling on, so I think I'll go shoot some posts into the future to make it look like I never leave the keyboard. Thanks for all the recent comments by the way people; I appreciate it a hell of a lot, especially when I'm forcing myself to try and write one more line.

The problems with plotting

I like to plot, but simultaneously, I hate to plot. Let me try and explain.

Before I embark on any long piece of writing - erm, which will be all of them, I guess - I like to try and get some sort of plot written down. That way I have some sort of idea where things are going. Essentially, it's an insurance policy. If I'm sitting at the keyboard wondering where to go next, I can look at the plot and go "Okay, that's the objective - now I just have to get there".

This is especially important in serialised fiction (ie Spider-Girl), as if you have no idea where things might be going to, you can't throw in clues or foreshadowing - and believe me, I like to do that where I can. I also really, really want internal consistency in any series; the world needs to make sense, even if it's a fantastic one, and there needs to be continuity. (That I can later retcon. Joke for the comics fans.)

Having said this, in the process of writing, I frequently go off-plot. In other words, the plot changes as I write it, usually because I have some sort of brainwave that is just too good to ignore. When that happens I usually end up re-writing my plot notes to accommodate the idea, just so I can basically tell myself the story and make sure it all makes sense. (Believe me, it often doesn't. I've rewritten the plot for the Spider-Girl Crossover arc about five times since the first draft. Looking at those original notes, there are plot holes big enough to drive a truck through.)

So I like to have the roadmap, I like to have the plot written down. It can be nightmarish to actually create that plot though, hence my hating to plot, too. Sometimes I will just not have any idea where the plot needs to go, or worse, I have an idea but it just seems too lame for words. Even worse than that, sometimes I have a plot and it's written down and... it still sucks.

This is the worse situation a still-to-be-written story can find itself in, because honestly, once I have the skeleton of a plot down I find it hard to throw that away. Why? Because the process is so tough. Believe it or not, getting ideas is easy (Especially in this 'genre' where essentially all I'm doing is writing down fantasies...). It's having those ideas make sense, and putting them into a story where the characters act in a (reasonably) believable manner, that's the hard part.

Sometimes, the really damn hard part. This is what leads to having loads of half-finished stories, or stories that are plotted but aren't written. In the former case, I usually haven't plotted to the conclusion in a way I like. The latter, I don't like the plot enough to write it - or I haven't plotted to the end, either.

Like opposable thumbs being what separates man from animal, I think plotting is what separates 'erotic fiction' from just 'porn'. While I often jokingly refer to my writing as porn (Hey there, Mr. High Self-Esteem!) in reality it's just fiction... that happens to be erotic in a very specific way. Whereas your average porn movie has zero plot (unless you call 'will the studly handyman fix the broken appliance' a plot) I like to think that everything I write has a definite plot, hopefully with decent dramatic tension, some character development and yeah, plenty of eroticism.

And that, I hope, is why it's worth reading what I write. That and you getting off, naturally. (Just couldn't exit without a dick joke, could I....)

Rollin', rollin', rollin'

... rollin' rollin' rollin'... rollin' right along on Spider-Girl issue 15, which is juuuuust shy of 10,000 words in another window right now. I've got one more scene to write. It's a doozy (or should be), but I'm waiting for inspiration to strike.

Incidentally, I am very much of the school of thought these days that writing is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. However, when it comes to writing essentially the same thing over and over in slightly different ways, that 1% becomes pretty darn precious. That one thing being masking or unmasking scenes.

Don't get me wrong - I like doing them (and oddly enough, I like the challenge of trying to make 'em different) but still. It can be tough. This one will come, I just thought while I was sitting here in front of the keyboard, might as well say 'hi'. So - hi! G'wan, say hi back.

Cutting

I'm about 3,000 into Spider-Girl 15, but for the last couple of days I haven't been that happy with the way the current scene is playing out. I made a decision just a second ago to rewrite, but that means losing a fair chunk of it - and then I figured I'd just share a paragraph I'm cutting.

Looking around, she saw one of the guards coming back toward her as he made a circuit. Slowly, she crossed her legs, lifting them up so that her hemline slid down, revealing more of her stockings and even a touch of garter. Sure enough, the guard noticed, slowing down to look at her. With her mouth taped, Betty had to make her eyes do most of the work; she gave him her best come-hither stare, and come hither he did. He stopped right in front of her as she uncrossed her legs then re-crossed them, surprising herself at how good the stockings felt. The guard leaned down towards her, putting one hand on her leg, sliding it up the fabric.

Like I said, it's cut... don't worry, there will be plenty of stuff to compensate.

Bugger-all feedback on issue 14, by the way. What, did everyone hate the Dynamic Duo?

If we were casting...

... this would be my Gwen Stacy. I literally based my description of Betty-as-Gwen on imagery of this lovely woman, so if I had a billion dollars... she'd be on the casting couch. Ahem. Doubt she can act, but hey, she looks the part.

The image is a preview of www.only-secretaries.com, the latest site behind the guys who run OnlyTease.com, which I highly recommend if (in their words) you prefer erotic, not extreme. Well hey, we can't read all of our erotica, right....

New release: Spider-Girl, issue #14

When the master of disguise known as the Chameleon was judged to be the greatest threat to her double identity, Spider-Girl enlisted the Fantastic Four to banish him to another dimension. Now, having discovered the Chameleon is still causing havoc, Spider-Girl has crossed dimensions to track him down...

Issue #14: Gotham Nights

Download from Maskingwriter (Yahoo! Group)

At last... Crossover begins! Spider-Girl has arrived in Gotham City, and she doesn't exactly get a warm welcome from the natives... but there are crimefighters in this world, too.

As always, if you have enjoyed this or any other issue of Spider-Girl, please click on an ad in the right-hand column for me. You'll feel better, and I guarantee you'll go to masking heaven.

I know it's been a real long while between issues but please, do tell me what you think. I was considerably creaky starting this one, so don't expect my best work, but I do like the way it turned out. Anyway; comments are always welcome, especially speculation and your ideas for how the story might go in future!

Self-indulgent nostalgic rambling

Can you remember the earliest times you felt - ahem - stirred by the prospect of masks or disguises?

I'm sure we all have a story (unless you just wandered onto this page by accident, in which case, seeya later), and for a lot of us it might involve Mission: Impossible or similar. That's a common touchstone, but I bet all of us have our own unique memories. If you're anything like me, those memories haven't faded too badly over the years, even though your original source may have long disappeared.

One of my earliest ones was of course the primary inspiration behind the Spider-Girl series - a single panel, really, of Betty Brant pulling on her mask. Don't know why, but that sure as hell got me. I also carried with me, for years, another turn-on from about the same time. I could see the image as clearly as anything in my mind's eye, and I knew the story it came from. That'd be this image here:

That there is a corner of a front cover to Eagle comic, dated 22nd January 1983. I know this because I have a copy sitting next to me, lent to me by a friend (who, of course, has no idea that I asked to borrow his entire collection of vintage Eagle comics, in part, just so I could find this particular issue). Given that issue's cover date, I would have been 10 years old when that issue hit the stands.

Well, now I know about when adolescent hormones started for Young GW.

That image drove me crazy, particularly when I read the story inside. Invisible Boy was a series where the kid in question ('Tim', who looked quite a bit like how 10-year old Ghostly Writer saw himself) could, erm, turn invisible. So far so dull. But of course while the comic story dealt with 'interesting' situations like Tim helping out refugees and stopping crimes, in reality what hormone-plagued boys like me wanted to see was Invisible Boy doing what any normal kid would do... sneak around and see girls naked.

Any normal kid. I wasn't normal, as we all know by now.

What Young GW wanted to see was girls in disguises. I'd already developed strange feelings after watching Mission: Impossible's Lynda Day George... and we all know how that Betty Brant crush manifested itself (admittedly, about 17 years later). So when my eyes clapped on that image on the front of that issue, you'd better believe I flipped straight to the Invisible Boy story.

It's not like it's Shakespeare, and no, I won't send you scouring the Internet to find some obscure 'torrent file so we can all read it. (Although if I had a scanner and not a crappy iSight camera, I'd share.) Basically Tim's single scientist of a father gets a new housekeeper... and of course as we all know from that spoiler of an image, said housekeeper is actually a gorgeous blonde in disguise. Or as Tim puts it:

"She's like some Hollywood film star!"

Yeah, emphasis on the word 'like' there, Tim. Still, she was blonde and kinda cute - but more importantly, she had just pulled off a wig and glasses! For Young GW, this meant she was a mistress of disguise, and hence a sex goddess. I would not be argued with, even if we all went back in time and tried.

Over the next three weeks my little adolescent heart went pitter-patter as I picked up each issue, hoping to see 'Miss Martin' transform herself for some obscure reason. I didn't get my wish, although I did get these two panels:

"Tim could imagine it so clearly..."

... and fairly obviously, so could little ol' me. So much so in fact, that the image above of 'Miss Martin' pulling off her wig stuck in my brain for 24 years... and in case you were wondering, here's where all this becomes relevant to our supposed topic...

... that image has inspired the plot of a potential story called, right now, The Babysitter. I think you can imagine where it might go.

And that, my friends, is what you call a tease.

Finished an ish. Maybe.

Might have just finished Spider-Girl 14. Not sure. Gonna sleep on it. Unsure whether the scene break I just came to is a good issue break, or whether I should go on a little further... but then, it's over 10,000 words (just) and I'm thinking the next natural break is several thousand words away.

Hence: may have just finished the issue.

Had a lovely "Oh, wait, wait WAIT - this would be SO MUCH BETTER if I did it this way" moment earlier, right in the middle of a scene which I already had completed in my head. The change was so blindingly obvious, but at the same time led so naturally to some other stuff that I want to do, that I just had to make it. It's funny (Well, to me) but I was so excited I wrote the 'revelation' down underneath the text as I typed, as if I was going to forget it. Not likely. Still, three words can change a lot of stuff, especially when those words are '[CENSORED] AS [CENSORED]!!'

(You didn't think I was going to spoil it, did you? Especially when the payoff isn't going to happen until issue 15... at least. I'm not that cruel.)

I have to say, these are the bits you live for as a writer - or at least I do. Not the moments when the characters 'talk to you' (because I don't feel they do; wanky as it sounds, I feel like they just talk, I listen and transcribe) but when the character's actions suddenly skew the plot in a new and altogether better direction than the way you were already travelling. That's when you give thanks to The Muse.

Well, I am knackered, as we say in England; I think I've written over 7,000 words of this issue in the last couple of days. Don't get too excited yet but I think the groove may be back. Shhhh! I said don't get excited....

PS I am writing, honest

Yeah, been working on Spider-Girl issue 14 today.

It's going kind of slow - the plot's mutating, so I am re-plotting it on the fly, but it's mutated in good ways, I hope. Need to get back into the brain-space I was in when I was writing it steadily.

But it is going.

Tale of a torrent

I love the internet.

Since I last posted, the very helpful (and obviously, smarter than I am because he thought of this, and I didn't) Zam Wessel 69 posted to several Yahoo! Groups that would probably be 'in simpatico' with my desire to see the unexpurgated version of The Black Widow. He basically said the same thing as me - man your 'torrent clients.

While it'd be nice to say that overnight that resulted in the 1.69Gb of data I need whisking down my 'pipes', what it has done is set up a small group - an elite 'cadre' if you like - of peers, all of whom are patiently waiting to get that damn file. And as we all know, the more we share, the more we get.

Unfortunately as none of us has a complete copy of the file, for quite a while we all just sat there with 0% to show for our trouble. Then, randomly, someone somewhere starts seeding, and there's a flurry of downloads as we all share the new pieces. Then it stops. Then it'll start again.

Since this morning, when I started at 0% downloaded, we've moved up to... wait for it... 1.41%! Or 24.3Mb. About, ooh, 15% of one episode of this 13-chapter serial. So, we've got a way to go.

What I've found weirdly heartening though, is to look at my peers list and think "Hey, all the people I can see here want the same thing I do. I bet they're all masking fans." I bet you are, too, because yesterday before I posted it was just me and one other guy (apparently) in the world after the same file. Now there's 19 of us, on average.

So I say to you: hang in there, people. It'll be worth it. (I hope.) And it's lovely to be downloading beside you.

Oh, and considering when I searched for '"the black widow" republic serial torrent' on Google yesterday my posting came up on page 1, if you came here looking for the torrent, it's over here - and please, if you've got the file, seed.

Altogether now... torrent!

Hey guys and maybe even gals... remember these?



Those there are the only clips I've ever seen of The Black Widow, a very hard to find 1947 Republic serial which, in case you haven't bothered to watch the clips above, features quite a bit of female masking.

I've been jones-ing to write a 'serial style story' for quite a while now, with these clips inspiring me to do so. I've even gotten to the point of starting to plot it (harder than it looks, those cliffhangers every episode).

Anyway, all this time I've really, really wanted to see the original serial so I could get some more inspiration, and hopefully see a few more disguise or impersonation sequences! Unfortunately the serial wasn't exactly a landmark, so it's only been available on VHS and hasn't had a DVD release...

... but that doesn't stop the Internet. Some wonderful kind person, understanding my bizarre need to watch old serials that cater to my 'special' fetish, has encoded all 13 chapters of The Black Widow and made a 'torrent for them. You can grab it right here.

(Before I go any further, if you don't know what a 'torrent' is, or what BitTorrent is, go find out. Then come back.)

So why do I tell you all this? Well apart from the fact that you too could now see this serial, the simple fact is... if you download the 'torrent too, then we all get the serial faster. That's how it works. (Sort of.)

So help my inspiration! Download that torrent and let's seed this sucker!

Looking for: Grey Orchid

This'll be short and sweet. I'm trying to track down the Grey Orchid, a writer who's done some excellent mask-related fiction in the past.

I had some excellent conversations with him via email in 2007, but despite several 'Where are you?' emails I've not heard from him since last May.

If anyone knows where he is - or better, if he's reading - get in touch. Ghostly Writer at G mail dot com is the email, except written... you know... like an email address.

Happy New Year's Resolutions

For those of you following the Western calendar, anyway. First day of 2008. We're living in the future, I tell you. Flying cars just around the corner.

So I've been gone for a while again, but rest assured I've been thinking of you (and replying to the odd comment, and email). It's funny, I realised yesterday that while I scour YouTube and Yahoo! Groups for the occasional masking-related bit, then get all bitter and upset that no-one's doing anything, at the same time... I'm not doing much of anything myself. Which seems a bit two-faced, if you'll excuse the pun.

New Year's Day is a very good time to look at that sort of thing and wonder if you can't make a change. So here I am, looking at it.

In the past couple of days I've dug through Google Docs, and a few other spots on my hard drive, checking out unfinished work. I have a lot of it. (Not all of it has seen the light of day, either.) I'm sure a lot of writers have similar issues, and many more 'wannabe' writers (which I still classify myself as, really) but I doubt many of them have the same issue... which is that often these stories are left unfinished by me because they served their purpose. In other words, they got me excited, and that was that.

Bugs me, though.

Sure, there are some stories that haven't been finished because I can't figure out how to finish them, or more likely, I don't have an ending that I'm happy with. (Father Knows Best is a large, irksome example of this. Part 4 has an ending. I'm just not sure it's the one I want.) There are others which I abandoned because I just decided the idea wasn't worth spit anyway, or that basically I didn't want to write that any more.

Truth is though, if I get right down and look at it, many if not most of these things I could finish... I just choose not to. I was looking at a couple of particular things in the last couple of days thinking "Might be fun to finish that". So that's why my New Year's Resolution - as regards 'this field', anyway - is...

... finish more stuff.

Oh, and I think I might ask for your help in that. So stay tuned.