Goals are great, but adaptability is greater.

So this year I started with the goal of finishing my novel, The Space Between Worlds, by the end of the year.

I no longer have this goal.

I made some major mistakes when working on it (namely, editing the draft while still completing the draft) which resulted in a bit of a confusing and contradictory mess. That would get more confusing each time I worked on it. I need some space away from this project.

So I’m starting a new project with some more modest limits. It’s a simple story, tentatively titled “No Rooms for Sightseers”, in which Janet Li gets a summer job at a hotel which has some unusual clientele from some unusual locations. It will be much shorter, simpler and (hopefully) more self contained. It should be a 12 part serial, around 1000-3000 words per part (I haven’t done the actual writing yet, so going to give myself a fair bit of leeway with word count). At most, that’s 36000 words, a fair sized novella. At least, it’s a long short story (12000 words). Because the form is strict, that should limit the temptation to expand, or at least stop me from acting on that temptation.

It’s also going to be published as a serial, fortnightly on this website, starting in July. That means I have to do it in order and hopefully won’t be tempted to backtrack on some of the decisions I’ve made.

It is entirely possible that this is a mistake, that I should keep plugging away at finishing the thing I told myself I would finish. But I have to acknowledge reality, and the reality is, maybe I’m not ready for a giant science fantasy epic (if that’s what The Space Between Worlds even is). Maybe I need to learn to walk, or to jog, before I can run.