The thing after next ...

[ellarien]

In a way, this is premature. I still have somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of the Behemoth novel to go, which is likely to take me most of the rest of the year if I can sustain the current level of progress. (And I may not be able to. I'm about to edit a conference proceedings.) I even have a plan for what to do after that; go back to the fanfic, give "Ambassador" the second half it obviously needs, and polish the other two and the very old but never publicly seen Strange Seas into one coherent sequence.

And after that, assuming I've suitably honed my editing skills, I go back and revise Behemoth 47. Maybe even think about submitting it somewhere, if I can get up the courage.

And after that? Ummm. Errr. After that, I'll have burned through about a decade's worth of ideas in maybe eighteen months, and there won't be much left in the barrel. 'Stop writing for another seven years' doesn't seem like a good approach, and though there are still a few Voyage story seeds lying around, I'd rather be working on the original stuff. There are a few fragments from the dry years; oddly enough, they're all fantasy, and I don't do fantasy; what I do is sci-fantasy, really, with modern or mildly futuristic trappings but a universe that works in ways bearing no resemblance to any known model -- Star Wars levels of scientific plausibility, if that.

At the rate my fabulator works, I should probably start thinking about the next thing fairly soon, so that it's ready to go when I need it.

All this might be easier if I did short stories, but I don't; my mind doesn't work that way. I also either don't get the overwhelming plethora of ideas that real writers do, or I'm too efficient at weeding out the unworkable ones before they get as far as words on disk. If I'm actively writing, I get enough ideas to keep the current thing going, and maybe a few extra, but that's all.