#anyway the 12dp retelling is going great

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Maybe the trick is to come up with the meta after I start writing. After failing to finish so many started stories, I got in the habit of having an outline and characters and themes before I started a story. But the stories I've finished lately have been much more spur-of-the-moment. I'll have a basic idea for what I want to happen in the story, start writing, and then start digging deeper as the stuff I write gives me new ideas about how the story should go and what the story means.

This means the writing process is a continuation of the fun brainstorming process, rather than a frustrating failure to live up to the cool story I came up with during the brainstorming process. I don't have to try to fit in all the cool foreshadowing and set up character traits or whatever. I can just write and have fun watching the story grow. It's not outlining or discovery writing or even "plantsing". It's just trusting that I know how to shape a story and letting myself have fun doing it. By letting the ideas take shape with the writing rather than coming up with too much cool stuff before.