Plodding along

So I was going back through my LJ archives, and I just noticed that it's been a year and a day since I posted Chapter Two of "Aftermath". Crikey! How did that happen?

I did complete a first draft awhile back, but it was in need of a lot of help -- it was more like a detailed outline than a real draft, and thank god for having a beta reader who was willing and able to tell me so -- and the prospect seemed daunting, so I kept setting it aside. Fortunately, a few weeks ago I got inspired to pick it up again, and I've been making good progress on it for the first time in ages. Including a little bit today, and a good discussion about my changes so far and my future intentions with said beta, which was nice and energizing. So maybe it won't take me another year to finish the story.

Sometimes I suspect what's blocking my writing in general is the feeling that I really ought to be finishing this fic rather than working on quicker and easier things. So I feel guilty for spending time on shorts, and don't give them the attention they deserve, and can't finish them, (or in some cases even get started), and so everything suffers. Also, this is the only multi-chapter story I've written alone since "Salvage"; every other larger effort since has been in collaboration with kunstarniki. And while I absolutely loved writing collaboratively, I wonder if I became too dependent on the feedback from my writing partner. I got used to the idea that someone would be taking a look at every scene I wrote and that I would have feedback within a day or two of sending it along. I'm not getting that with "Aftermath", and so I get tempted into working on shorts that I can finish more quickly (in theory anyway -- it took me *months* to get around to finishing "Simple", for example). Am I really admitting that I'm this much of a sucker for feedback? I guess I am.

I know this lack of time, inspiration, and motivation to write is a bug that's going around fandom, and this is probably just how it's manifested in me. Blah blah whine. If nothing else, making a public statement that I fully intend to keep this story going, and to finish sooner rather than later, might keep me on track to actually do it.