I finally completed a full story. Yes, it’s all still in a rough draft form, but people on the internet have read it and I’ve gotten decent reception for it. At least, decent if you go by the fact I get few visitors and even fewer likes.

Either way, it was a huge win for me. For several people, maybe even many, my goal of finishing just one story may have seemed small. I imagine that for people who have been writing for a long time, people passionate about writing whether they’ve ever published anything or not, they fully understood my desire for a completed story and perhaps once had a similar struggle.

The whole reason I set that simple goal was because I was scared. I was terrified that I would never see any of my ideas to completion, doomed to forever begin an engaging and exciting story and stop just as things were starting to take shape.

Taking Back the Kingdom was my first completed story, mostly because it was so easy to write. I gave myself a prompt and, while the story evolved heavily away from it, knowing the goal I was after in the beginning really helped me develop the characters and the story line better than I’m used to.

This is also one of very few stories that I’ve started specifically from a prompt, rather than other stimuli. In fact, most of the stories I begin come to me as ideas I have based off of dreams I remember. I have three different projects I want to work on right now that are also based on either dreams or daydreams.

That brings me to setting a new goal, a bigger goal. You see, while one of those three projects is likely one I won’t start at all, the other two I feel have potential. The tricky thing for me is that they both feel like multi-book projects. Hell, one of them is already a minimum of seven books if I do it how I want to. The other one I currently only have ideas for two books for, but that project is a much more vague concept to me.

Now, as I work on either of these projects, I’m not sure if they’ll end up on here at all. They’re much larger and more involved, and the writing I’ve done for the seven book project has been more fragmented than things I’ve posted here have been. In fact, I already have segments written from four of the books.

I’ve currently titled that project “Hero’s Spirit”, though that’s certainly subject to change. It’s set to follow a total of six teens in as they grow, and possibly save the world. I know, not the most original description, but I don’t want to give too much out about it on the internet. I think I’ve already given a few descriptions of it on the blog, but I think I’ve kept them relatively vague.

The reason for that vagueness is that I intend for these to actually be books, books that I publish and sell. While I’ve been a bit slow to fully work on the project, I’m allowing myself to focus more on it now that I’ve finished another project.

Now, that’s not to say that I won’t be working on any other projects in the meantime. For example, I would like to revisit and possibly finish my Minecraft fanfiction, Journey in a Strange World (or whatever the hell I called it) at some point in the near future. Originally, that was going to be a journal that was entries long. It was also originally started as a National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo/NaNo) project, and my goal was to write about an entry a day for it. We see how well that went.

I think trying to stretch that out to 30 entries is going to be slow and tedious at this point, so I’m probably only going to need a few more entries and the epilogue to actually finish that story. But, that is another goal I have, to finally finish off that project.

Likewise, I will in time be revisiting Nameless, another NaNo project of mine. Much like Taking Back the Kingdom, that one started as a prompt, and I still think it would be a fun challenge to finish.

Revisiting both of these is going to take time, however. I need to evaluate where I can go from where I ended with them, decide if my plans for them need changing, or if I feel like I can truly finish them in the way they deserve. In the mean time, I might try a short story here or there to give the blog a little more variety, and I do intend to start a few more Monologued Dialogues before long as well.

I’m also toying with the idea of donation incentives, should someone wish to offer monetary support to Short and Scorch. Specifically, I’m considering setting it up so that if someone donates, they can request that I do a short story for a specific prompt they give me, within reason. There are certain things I’m not knowledgeable to write about, and others that I simply refuse to write about. I would also have to work out if this would be a donation for things to be posted to the blog only, or if I’d allow the option to have them submitted privately to the donator.

I also have to contend with the fact that I, quite frankly, don’t know that I’m talented enough that anyone would even pay me money to write them a short story. Likewise comes the problem that, should someone actually pay me to write a story for them, how easy would it be for them to try to pass it off as their own if I allow the option to give them only to the donator?

Between the confidence issue and the logistics, it’s likely an idea that won’t happen unless I begin to really get popular for some reason. It’s more likely that I finally get my act together and start producing videos for the TikTok account I created for the blog. I have plenty of ideas for it, just nothing I’ve actually taken the time to make yet. (If I do make videos, they’re not going to be about my stories unless they’re updates. They’ll just be me and Shorty, and probably some representations of struggles from the past few years as I battle depression and self-image issues.)

Really, this has all been a long and ranty way of saying: Now that I’ve completed one big thing I’ve been worried about never doing, I’m looking at doing bigger and better things. I’m no longer thinking about projects in terms of “If I can finish it” but instead of “When I finish it.” Hero’s Spirit and the other multi-book project, which I’ve currently dubbed “Rose Queen,” are both projects I know that I can finish. Rose Queen might not ever come to fruition only because I’m not as settled on how good of a story it would actually be, not because I don’t think I can do something as ambitious as multiple books for the same series.

I would be willing to bet that, should I ever publish anything as a full book, it will likely be my Hero’s Spirit project. And while I likely won’t post it on the blog as I have other stories, I don’t see why I can’t give updates on it and possibly post excerpts as I work on it, so my readers can get a sneak-peak on what kind of project it is I’m working on.

So, as I proceed to set bigger, loftier goals, I hope that those who have come back again and again and shown support through following the blog or leaving a like on various posts will continue to enjoy my stories, reviews, and discussions with myself. I have a couple of posts I’m working on now that I think people will enjoy, including a far overdue review of Nerd Fitness Academy and a new Monologued Dialogue.

Thank you to those who have been here for any of the journey to my first completed story, and to those who have given me a chance to entertain them so far. I hope you like what I have yet to come.