One more reaction to "Astounding."

John W. Campbell was a writer himself, best known for "Who Goes There?" the basis for the movie "The Thing." But in his later career he mostly spun off ideas to writers.

Which got me thinking about story priorities. Obviously, with S.F. the most important factor was the idea itself. It was assumed the idea would be written up competently. Which is why characterization and style in early S.F. is mostly missing.

What are my story priorities?

Making this up as I go along, I can divide them into three: Storytelling, writing, and ideas.

When I talked about this to Sabrina she immediately asked the difference between storytelling and writing.

Writing to me is the word choice, the sentence structure, the style (whatever that is). Storytelling is putting the elements of the story together in a readable way.

So what are my relative strengths?

I think the storytelling itself comes to me relatively easy.

I'm fairly facile in writing--though that is a element that can be improved forever.

Finally, I need a basic story idea, but I'm not pushing to change the world.

Looking over what I've written, and in reading reviews, it's clear that most people like or dislike a book because of the storytelling and/or ideas. Writing comes last.

Of course the writing effects both the ideas and the storytelling in infinite ways--but the readers usually aren't paying attention to the magic behind the story.

This is all pretty rough theory and mostly for my own clarification.

This break in writing has me thinking about how I want to approach my next projects, and I'm still wavering between the two extremes of just getting my stories out there--or taking the time to research, plan, and fully think through a story before I begin writing it.

Basically, I can do the former forever and a day, but in order to take a step upward, I probably need to do the latter.

Problem is--I may never do the latter.