Not writing for 4 days, sinking ever deeper into despair. What's the use! It's all for nothing! May as well give up!

The only cure for that is to write.

Got in my car and followed the O'Neil highway to the end, knowing it ended up in Prineville, but not sure what path it took. A 20 minute drive to Prineville. Kept going, ended up in the Ochoco's. Alone with the smoke. Actually, the smoke wasn't too bad, so went for my walk.

Picked up my Thirteenth Principality story, "The Wyvern Riders," and it went off in an unexpected direction. (One advantage to coming back to it months later.) Really liked what I wrote, but on the way back home realized that I don't really have a bad guy in this story--or even a real menace.

And you know what? I'm fine with that. I'm exploring this world, having adventures, and these stories are going to be my playground.

In other words, the point of this series is to have fun. To write for my own self. I love fantasy, but I've always had trouble with the idea of writing gargantuan novels, as is normally done.  These shorter stories set in the same world are just the right approach for me. In the end, I may have as many words as some of these huge fantasy novels, but just written in shorter increments.

These are meant to be a series of novellas, set in the same world, with some of the same characters but not always, and in no particular order. So far, they've been about 30K words each, but I've decided if they go less than that or more than that, it's fine. Eventually they will all be collected. I have a vague idea of writing 13 of these stories, but that isn't necessary. 

Each story I write in this world is fleshing it out. I'm realizing that things that happen in the second story will need to be accounted for in the first book, and things happening in the third story will need to be accounted for in the first two books.

In other words, I'm world building by writing, but because I've not published them and thus bound them in concrete, I can continue to build up the backstory as I go along.

Kinda cool.

After years of avoiding shorter pieces, "FREE MARS!" and "Said the Joker, to the Thief" are two of my favorite stories. Whether they are marketable is another story.

I'm sort of trapped by my small success. I need to give each publisher their own space, make sure each book has a debut, and then support. I can't just go throwing stories online.

But someday, when the thread I've been following breaks, I'll be free to just start putting stuff up.