The Problem with Prequels

The Doctor: Time can be rewritten!

River Song: Not those times. Not one line! Don’t you dare!

The short story I’m writing now has a very sad ending. I hate to write unhappy endings, I always want to change them to make things better. But you can’t do that, the story needs to play out as it’s meant to; the future can’t be sacrificed on the alter of the past. In this case, the future is the heroine’s unborn daughter. The daughter gets her happy ending eventually, and well-deserved, too! But the mother…it’s her fate to suffer. She’s already lost, and there’s no changing that.

I never thought I’d write this particular story, but sometimes a tale calls out for a voice as this one did. I never know when a story will call to me. There are endless potentials floating out there — all possible stories. Sometimes one of them asks me to be its midwife and I always comply.

That’s why I don’t get writer’s block. I just wait patiently for a story to want to be born and then I write it. And not all stories are for the public, either. Some just need entrance into the collective consciousness, and that’s enough for them.

People ask me when my books will come out and I have a hard time answering. Most assume that it’s because I’m afraid to publish.

That’s not it, not at all.

I’m just waiting for the right story, one that fits the current moment and wants to be read by others. When that happens I’ll share it, no doubt there.