Now WIP It, WIP It Good...

[geoviki]

Okay, I'm awash in bookmarks for those ubiquitous Work-In-Progress chapters. My current count is 26.

Some are frequently updated; some are well-known by their hanging-out-there state. Some everyone else is reading and waiting for, too. At some point, I decided I loved these 26 enough to keep my eye on them, and spend a fair amount of clicking power checking on updates, probably too frequently. Some I know I will have to reread in their entirety in order to remember the characters and plot ("Is that the one where Ron dies, or is that the one where Malfoy's parents are snuffed early...") Just when I think I can't add another one, I do (November Snow, you are the latest to win me over by your exquisite writing.

Talking with another author on this, I found that she doesn't write WIPs nor does she like them. I think I prefer complete stories if I can find them, but I'd hate to miss any of the 26 I'm watching.

Bottom line is that I can't write that way, even if I wanted to post chapter by chapter. So I have to wait until I finish a whole story, then post. I can see that I will never build up to hundreds of reviews (which are great for author morale and encouragement).

So do you like them? Can you write them? What's it like?

Comments

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Your (much admired) technique is AJ Hall's. Hats off to you, but I can't do it. I find that feedback, even inane feedback, absolutely carries me over through the dry patches. So my current WIP (which may remain so for a while, because it's in a fandom I don't much revisit these days) was written in 1,200 to 2,000-word chapters, each of the 24 chapters written in even smaller instalments at times and tested at the Jedi Council boards.

So which WIPs do you follow?

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

Too many WIPs! And I've added one or two more this week.

Well, there're the ones eveyone else is waiting for: Snitch!, Draco Veritas, Malfoy, P.I., Quiescent, Resolutions, Sins of the Father...

There's Checkmate, Potion Gone Wrong, Readiness is All, The Untold Want, All Torn Down, Animus, Daddy's Favorite, Here Be Monsters, Goodness of their Hearts, Blood Magic, Shattered, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Windfallen, Un Dieu Anonyme, Life Debt by Dela Ria, Amalgam by Frulie, Oscillate Wildly, Poison and Memory by Nightrunner..probably more. I can fill in authors if you like; I'm feeling lazy this morning.

So am I missing some classics?

[clemencederoch.livejournal.com]

Carrying over from the discussion in my LJ, yes, I love WIPs. As long as they're good. And sometimes I check for updates compulsively...

So which do you read?

You wrote "The Waters of March", right? I loved that.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

I've listed most of my WIPs here:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/geoviki/4980.html?thread=14196#t14196
That was a quick and dirty list.

And yes, I wrote Waters of March. I think that's when we friended each other. Thanks for the nice comment, there. I always appreciate it!

So do you have favorite WIPs that I'm missing?

[zionsstarfish.livejournal.com]

I totally identify with you. I can't write WIPs either! All I can think of is, what if I need to introduce something early on in the story, but I don't think of it or see the need for it until I'm on Chapter 42?? And I almost never write linearly either, so yeah, unless you want to read the end months before the first line (which is typically how things end up ;)) I won't be writing a WIP. The closest thing I have to one is my (super fun titled) Not Yet 'series', but they're more like sequential self-contained stories.