Aside from working at the zoo and in retail (a job I will always hate – does anyone actually like working in retail? I’m serious, you never really lose faith in humanity as quickly as when you work in retail.) Okay, where was I going with this…

Oh, right! Aside from working, I have also been building my backlog of unwritten works, and I thought it might be fun if I shared some of those ideas with you.

I’m constantly undermining myself by taking on too many projects at once. Unfortunately, I have this horrible habit of getting 10 pages into the first chapter of a novel, getting bored, and then starting a new one. The next idea is always greater, better, brighter, more shiny (and I do love shiny things). But, really, the truth is that I just don’t want to have to sit down and write. Because the thing that people don’t say very often is the one speck of truth that seems to be overriding my life at the moment: sometimes writing sucks.

It’s not just that you can’t seem to write anything good (bad days are going to happen. A lot of the time they are more frequent than the good writing days), but that you just don’t want to write at all.

But taking too many days off can lead you to the position I am in now: watching Netflix, lying in my bed, and avoiding my responsibilities. I don’t suggest this route.

Still, a writer is always a writer, and so I have slowly been building upon ideas that are simmering in the back of my brain. I know some of them are ready for me to sit down and spill them onto paper, while others will not be ready for a considerable amount of time.

My great-grandmother used to say “let it simmer till it sizzles.” She was talking about how to cook green beans and potatoes, but this can also be used as a pretty good metaphor for the state of some of these manuscripts. There is still too much water in the pot, the ideas have yet to meld together – to sizzle.

But it doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

My current #1 project (and the novel I have been working on the most recently) is the story of a young girl (20-something, but we’re not sure of her age exactly) who is a Grim Reaper for pets. She was a Grim Reaper for people, but then she got demoted. Why? Because she fell in love with a human, that’s why! And that is definitely against the rules. In fact, humans in general are against the rules. So what happens when she discovers she is going to have to infiltrate human society in order to find her murderer? OH SNAP.

For this novel, I am still in the process of discovering the “rules” of the world, how things work in the universe, so to speak. I’m fairly certain it is just like our world with the reapers existing on the super down-low.

Another project that is truly on the back burner – one that has been sizzling for years now – is a book I have nicknamed “The Thirty,” with a plot more complicated than my brain can hold onto at once (at least for right now). Essentially, it is about the daughter of a senator who is invited to participate in a “mock UN” event that turns out to be an orchestrated worldwide game of “Hostage” with the sons and daughters of world leaders as the players. All in an effort to lay the groundwork for a third world war. BUM BUM BUUUUUUUMMMMMM!!!

Yeah, like I said, it’s complicated. I’m not sure if even that small explanation of what it is supposed to be makes sense. It doesn’t even all make sense to me. We’ll see how much of that one ends up making it down on paper 🙂

I have a couple others, but I think I will leave it there for right now, because I am currently getting a bunch of plots mixed together in my head. Ah, the plight of a writer.

-KP