I haven't been checking in. . .
I've been working on my 'map' story every day, although at a much slower pace than before. I'd told myself I'd need to work twice as much to get it finished by the end of the month, but it seems I'm working half as much; there are -quite literally- not enough hours in the day. I'm very, very busy. . .
I've long since finished the fun part; writing the rough draft in my notebook, coming up with all of the creative bits. I've transferred it all into my phone, now I'm slowly trying to stitch it all together into a coherent story, and finding a lot of problems along the way. . .
The way I piece a story together is like building a bridge from both ends at once, and hoping both sides are level when they meet in the middle. Only it's worse than that; I don't start with the beginning or the end, I build in random order, making a bunch of small middle sections then try to figure out how to attach them all together. The result is usually an inconsistent story full of broken logic.
And the other problem I always have: It wants to be a bigger story. I come up with novel sized ideas and try to make them short stories. Not sure what my current word count is, but I have feeling I might have to do some serious trimming to get this down to 10,000 words, and I'm not entirely confident it'll be a good read at that size. . .
I'm just going to keep poking at it until it's a story that I like.