Sigh.

Bleh, I've had the beginnings of a writing funk ever since I used up most of the prompts on my table for 100songs that were really inspiring me. I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel to make some of the remaining prompts fit plot ideas, and I've been mostly stalled on the most recent piece for weeks now. Every now and then I write a little bit, but I feel on the one hand it's going anti-climatic like the one I did for the Fly prompt and on the other hand like that's the way it really should be in order to develop one angle of the storyline further in later stories.

Then I got distracted by wanting to write for Mannix, but the problem there is that I want Lew Wickersham to be around and most people probably don't know or care about him. So it feels pointless to post Mannix pieces to FF.net. As I speculated before, sometimes it's more pleasant to post pieces where I don't expect feedback from fans, such as here. It was so nice to post things with Ginger and Lou and not have to be disappointed that no one will comment who is familiar with the characters from watching the episode. But since Lew is a main character in season 1 of Mannix, whether fans like that or not, I keep wanting to post my Mannix stuff there and to AO3 when I write it. People are reading silently, which I appreciate, and I do love the steady reviewers, but neither of them is really familiar with season 1, they don't feel they have access to watching it, and I do kind of long for someone to also hop aboard who both knows and likes Lew from watching the show. I am happy, however, that both of the reviewers seem to be coming to like Lew through my fics. That is quite an honor, to be able to write the character well enough for that to happen! I just wish I could actually share the show with them too, you know? Then they could experience the character and the friendship between the characters every way possible and we could have fun discussions about episodes and such.

Then I was stupid enough to give in to my desires to work on a second Mannix multi-chapter while the first one is unfinished. I was afraid it would destroy my motivation to work on the first one if I started a second one, and that seems to be happening, alright. Plus I'm stalling a bit on the second one now. So at the moment, nothing much is being accomplished anywhere.

For the last few days I've largely been floundering and wondering what to work on. Nothing seems to tickle my writing fancy long-term, like the Ginger and Lou pieces were doing. I was so happy working on those, happier than I've been, writing-wise, in quite some time, I think. Those characters, and the way I've fleshed them out, just appeal to me so much. I love oneshot characters and how they're canon characters but still have a lot of mysteries about them for a fanfic writer to flesh out. It's kind of the best of both worlds between canon characters and OCs.

I wish I could push past this current piece that's stalling so bad and I wish the remaining prompts would give me more inspiration than they're doing. With the dwindling inspiration, I'm not sure any of the other prompts can jump-start the creative juices again. I'm so far along with the prompt set and I wanted to finish it so badly. I seem to keep falling back on crossovers to keep the ACT IV set of prompts moving and I don't like that at all. I want the prompts to mostly still be Ginger and Lou interacting without running into every character possible along the way. They should still be able to carry the stories without needing crossovers.

I know I could push the stalled piece aside and try another prompt, but I'll have to tackle the piece sometime and I really think it would be better to wrestle it into completion before going on to anything else. Then I won't have to worry about it later.