Castle's Chessboard

26 Paychecks: Task 2 Time in a Bottle

I've been participating in a WDC activity called 26 paychecks which involves a series of challenges to complete. This weeks was to discuss a writing project that I've been working on that hasn't been progressing. I tend to brainstorm faster than I am able to complete projects so there are a lot of nice ideas I have in backlog and a ton of projects and storylines that I haven't had a chance to progress further in.

One of the ones I only completed a rough prologue for is a Steampunk related Time travel story where the main character travels back to 1800. It is meant to be a short story but would comprise of a few chapters. I actually wrote the prologue for this as part of a WDC Steampunk contest 2 years back and had hopes of continuing it but was never see the story through to completion. In case you are interested you can check the story prologue here: "Off the Record (Prologue)" 

I have a rough idea of where I want to go with the story. The protagonist will attempt to return to his own time using his knowledge of future events.

Ironically the issue that has stopped me from completing this story is a lack of time. For me writing is an extracurricular activity and I don't have the time to pursue it as much as I would like. The last couple of years have been very busy for me. I've been working a full time job that has gotten increasingly stressful and I got engaged last year so I haven't really been able to focus on other activities. Even when I do get downtime I find myself just wanting relax, immerse myself in movies or spend time with my family. Eventually I hope to be able to balance my free time enough that I can complete some of the projects that I have been planning not only with writing but coding and blogging as well.

Currently I feel like it is very unlikely I will be able to pick up and complete this story just with the amount of projects I currently have on my plate. The only thing I feel like this 26 paychecks task has probably done the best thing possible in pushing the story forward by making me remember it and analyze where I am with it. The only thing that I feel members of the group / community can really do to help is encourage me and let me know that they would like to see this story come to fruition. Whether I am able to finish it or not... only time will tell.

Prompt ▶︎

Write an around 300 to 500 word piece about a writing project that you have been working on, but aren't pushing through to completion. (If you need more words to explain your project: go ahead and write more. Just keep it on topic.)

Explain the project: genre, plot synopsis, expected length (short story, saga, epic, novel, series).

Tell us how long ago you started writing it.

Tell us why you stopped working on it, or why the work is not advancing.

Tell us what people in this group or on Writing.Com could do to help you see your project through to the end.

For this task, you can submit your writing as an item link, entry link, or typed directly into a reply to this post.