Year: 2009

Almost eight months, actually. That’s how long I’ve been writing my twitter-based bit of serial fiction and collecting/archiving it over on the “Adrift” blog. That amounts to just a bit over 200 posts, more than a few shootings, several deaths, lots of questions of loyalty and trust, one bloody zero-g amputation, and a friend left behind.

The story has proceeded largely without planning — one day’s post might get me thinking about what would happen next, and that might give me ideas for the next couple days (which, sometimes, I even remember when it comes time to post something the next day), but that’s about as far as it goes — when I comment on my main Twitter page that I’m excited to find out what happens next, I’m not self-marketing or being disingenuous — I don’t know what’s coming, and I am absolutely enjoying the story as much as any other reader (some of whom have been even more enthusiastic about spreading the word about the story than I have).

So I was a little surprised, yesterday, when I realized (about two hours after posting my update yesterday, then re-reading it), that I’d finished the first story — the first ‘book’, if you will.

It ended like this:

I tap in two messages, and send them in opposite directions. The first reads, “I am coming.” The second, “I am coming back.” Then I tell De to jump.

As I said, it was only thinking (and talking with Kate) about it later that I realized I’d written the last scene of the first story – the one properly labeled “The Drift” – and that we were moving on to the Next Thing.

What’s the Next Thing? I’m no more sure of that than I have been with anything else pertaining to this yarn, but I know I’m not stopping any time soon. There’s a lot more story there, and a great deal of distance for Finnras to go (both forward and, possibly, down). Verily, we shall see. S’possible I might even write the whole first story up in proper novel format, using the twitterfiction as an outline, but who knows. In the meantime, I have a story to write. Heck, I’ve already posted the first entry in the next story arc, so it’s not as though there’s a big cliffhanger to wait on. Plus, I’ve got some revisions on Hidden Things to finish up, and a not-totally-exciting trip this weekend on which to work on them; there’s plenty going on. In fact, there always is; aside from the rather arbitrary moment marking the end of one arc and the start of the next, there really isn’t much reason to even stop here for this bit of reflection and naval gazing.

Except for the obvious; I’ve been doing this weird thing for awhile, and sometimes it’s worth pausing to see if you even know what you’re doing, or if you’re enjoying it.

I don’t.

But I sure am.