Story Crafter dropped the pile of stories into a chest and closed the lid shut. She’s not going to bother with editing this year. This year she’s going to write just for fun.
She returned to the clear desk, with just paper and quill waiting for her. She smiled down with excitement. It would be the first time she wrote an empath.
For the Christmas short story one of the writers borrowed another's character - an empath who also was a writer. Then the Story Crafter nagged enough to get the unfinished draft where the character came from.
In the short story, an empath's friend teased him mercilessly about his books, while in the original the love interest teased him only slightly… Of course, in each of the stories there was much more than teasing about books, but how much drama was left on the table for when a love interest would tease an empath about his books…
Story Crafter came back to chip away at this story, with various other magic and interesting creatures popping up, and lots of talking, and guessing, and teasing and feeling, with book-specific teasing being pushed further and further down the plot. Not that it really mattered, the characters had great energy with each other anyway.
But over time, even the chest was not enough to contain the other stories. They needed to be read, beyond the writers’ cabin.
Looming over her was Thinking. Once she’d let it start, all other things would be on hold. Thinking did not share attention, Thinking had to know all the details, even if it was not quite possible.
For a while she thought about posting them unedited, but soon she went down the “I’ll just tidy them up a bit first” path, never to be seen again…
Well, at least for long enough to realize that it wasn’t such a good idea after all.
With a sigh, she returned to the empath story. And Thinking.
She tapped the quill against the paper. With so many projects stuffed into the chest, writing a new one was not a priority. Sure, that’s what she’d do anyway, and wasn’t writing better than not doing anything? But… she stared at the chest again.
She folded the empath story and put it neatly at the corner of the desk. Was she ready to get back into editing though? She shivered, remembering how her own story defeated her at the last editing attempt.
One way to find out. She flung the chest open and found the partly edited manuscript. Ugh. Do I really want to do that to myself? Memories of struggling with the story took over her emotions.
I can do it. She decided, tossing the memories out of her mind.
Settling by the window, she started reading to get back into the story.
It is really fun! I completely forgot what I liked about this story while I was busy fretting about editing it. She fixed a couple of typos on the way and further clarified the worldbuilding. By the time she reached the unedited parts, she was in full editing mode, and only hearing her kids back in the real world made her stop to check if everything was still all right.
As she kept coming back to work on this story, her gaze kept sliding towards the staff with the dusty crystal orb on top.
I haven’t made a movie in ages. She bit her lip, knowing that she won’t talk herself from that distraction easily.
Just a few days later the Idea happened.
Yeah, I’m not getting out of making that movie now. She thought, not even close to feeling sorry about that.