After reading over the many, many awesome and very curious responses to our share your last sentence entry, Brandyllyn wrote:
I was reading the post on last sentences and saw that many were from people’s works in progress. I thought a minute about mine and while I have a couple of WIPs floating about, most recently I was writing on my never story. This is usually a short story (sometimes fanfiction) where I can do silly things with my characters and writing knowing there’s no way I’m ever going to try to publish it. It’s where I write when I have no ideas for my novels but need to write anyway. I find a lot of my good writing migrates between the “never” stories and the “real” stories as it’s a great tool for me as a writer.
I suppose the long and short is – am I the only one who does this? I’d be curious to know if anyone else has a ‘never’ story.
Huh. Interesting question. I’m usually writing for this here site, and while there have been a few entries I couldn’t really get anywhere with (“Does putting the names of contemporary songs in a novel date it or somehow interrupt the reality constructed by the reader?” – Yes/no questions don’t really light a fire under my verbose ass) most of the time things I start out writing end up here.
But what about you – do you have a never and a real?
I’m constantly thinking up stories to preserve my own sanity, to keep me busy, to distract myself from bad days, to think myself to sleep… Some of these stories evolve into things I actually write down, Most of them don’t. Right now I’m writing one of them down, because I really like the characters and don’t want to forget about them. Sadly, I hadn’t fleshed out much of the context, so I managed to get in minor trouble with that. I wonder if I’ll ever manage to write down their whole story…