Life, Writing, Weirdness

The idea of writing series appeals to me in a limited way. I have a general preference for things to have a definite beginning and ending. The forever series that lasts for as long as an author is alive and can keep getting contracts for it isn’t for me as a writer. As a reader, it can be appealing if I love the characters, but I’ve found in most cases even that gets thin after a while and I have to put the series down for a few years. A couple of times, I’ve never picked the series up again.

As a writer, if I do a quick summary of all the novel-length work that’s published, at final draft status, or in progress, it comes out like this:

Stand Alone: 7, 2 of which need further editing and two more are currently in progress.

Duology: 2, and in both cases the 1st book is written and the 2nd is outlined

Trilogy: 4, and for one of those trilogies, the third book is only outlined, while for another the first is complete and the other two have been outlined.

Longer Series: 1 set of 5 (which was originally a set of 4, but the third book got far too long trying to cover far too much). These are the current major editing project, working through the final draft with two done and three to go.

Looking ahead, I have a lot of potential projects planned. A lot as in if I counted only the novel-length stories I have a fleshed-out idea for that comes in at no less than a page, I could draft a novel a month for the next four years and still have two left over at the end. It seems unlikely that I’ll ever get to them all, because the ideas never stop, so there will always be more to write.

To make a similar breakdown I did for previous or current work:

Stand Alone: 21. 6 of these are fully outlined.

Duology: 3.

Trilogy: 6.

Longer Series: 1 set of 5, currently in the early outlining stage.

I do have an idea for a series with thirteen total volumes. These would be pulpy privateer adventure SF, but the plotting on that has only advanced to a paragraph each, and it’s likely going to take quite a while to get Scorpion to the top of the list.

Not counting Scorpion, we have 50 potential novels, only 29 of which are part of something that’s planned to be more than a single volume. I’m forced to conclude I like writing stand alone stories as much as I like reading them, even if that’s mostly not what I’m reading this year. They’re also about 2/3 SF, which tracks to my recent tastes.

From here, my indie plan is to mostly not publish a set until it’s ready to go in its entirety and then I’ll do each volume at measured intervals. And those intervals might be short. I think I’m not alone in hating when I have to wait a year or more for the next book in a set.

I may break that rule with the two duologies where I’ve written the first book. The first book of each stands well on its own and the second picks up some potential threads to tell a new story, though with the same characters. I could probably say the same about the first book of the trilogy where I’ve only outlined the second and third, but that’s a decision for further down the road.

But if I don’t want to run out of things to publish, I need to get more fiction writing done in both the short and medium terms. I finished the last scene of a novel recently and have a couple others in-progress so really should be focusing on something in that group for drafting and I’d better make good progress on the set of five for final draft editing.

Be well, everyone.