Shopping For Direction

Spent the day doing a little clearance shopping. First, it was the book sale at the library, where I got a copy of Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days and Lorrie Moore's Who Will Run The Frog Hospital? Then it was the mall to get some new clothes on those really cheap post-holiday prices. I got some new jeans and shirts and such to replace the puffy stuff I've been wearing. It was nice, for the first time in my life, not to have to shop in the big and tall section.

And I've been shopping, sort of, for which novel to write next. I have competing ideas and interests here, as I'm sure lots of writers do. My choices are:

Novel A: The third book in the sci-fi trilogy, which is a multi-character, multi-arc archetectonic doorstop kind of book. There's no real incentive to write it right this moment, as the first two books aren't published, and maybe more than that, I've lived with this story for over ten years and I'm reluctant to let it go.

Novel B: A meta-space pulp-noir type thing, that has a little to do with the trilogy, and came out of the novel in a month thing. It presents the most challenges from a technique point of view, and makes more sense I think, for a bunch of reasons, to proceed with right now instead of more trilogy stuff.

I just can't get my hooks in to either one. It's frustrating, but I think I'm at a crossroads of sorts in my writing. I'm feeling a little in a rut, a little anxious for new experience, new blood so I've been writing a new story and revising others lately, working on the zine, the Arts Guild, flexing the old muscles in new ways.

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