Plodding as writing

So. I am currently technically editing Boy & Fox (I've been stuck on ~page 15 for a bit now...) and working on The Empty Book (Horror) and Rites of Exorcism (Urban Fantasy) slowly but surely. Both are at about the same word count, but the TEB comes far slower. Strangely, it's also the only project I've worked on the past year that has involved no 'kill and start over' in its writing. Oh, scenes have been deleted and there's a few I know I need to move about later on but 'add a bit, go away, add a bit more' seems to work for it, somewhat to my surprise. It probably helps that the story is dark enough that I can only write about it for short periods anyway.

Rites of Exorcism is pretty much moving slowly as I try to get the scenes I write to even remotely match the ones in my head. I suspect I need to re-read the previous draft entirely and figure out what scenes from it will be kept at all in order to have some sense of real progress. As for Boy & Fox, I'm still running into the tonal shift: the first 8 pages are quite different from the rest of the novel and I'm still working on meshing them together better so that Bess's arrival in the story is less like a live grenade and more a movement forward for Boy.

In other writing news, I'm giving serious thought to doing scifi for nanowrimo this year. I have a story that's been rummaging about my head in various forms for years now and it would be nice to try having a first draft of substantial length for a change. I just need to figure out which of the various iterations of it make the most sense, and am certain the version involving incestuous census takers is pretty much off the board.

In which my brain refuses to leave me alone

Way back at the start of June I began Bird & Jester, intended to be a YA story about two twins born to different parents dealing with a renegade member of their own family, fairies, and sasquatches living in a trailer park. Unfortunately, the MCs voice just never came together properly and the project died on the page. It happens.

Unfortunately earlier this week my brain began revising the setting, altering characters, shoving their ages up a decade and giving thought to using 2-3 POVs for the story instead. The vague plot running through my head in involves a town's Christmas In July idea gone horribly wrong and will also involve using a character from a short story begun at least 10 years ago and never finished. 

Naturally, the entire thing needs a  new title -- not that I much liked the Bird/Jester one anyway -- so I shall have to work on that and figure out how much of the setting and my notes I can salvage from the last iteration of the matrix.