Those Damn Plot Bunnies

I love them. So cute, so fluffy, with their twitching noses and giant, floppy ears. One look and I’m hooked, addicted on the newness and adorable way they hop across the page.

Until it’s two AM and they aren’t so cute anymore with their fangs stuck in my arm and my fingers aching from pressing so many keys. They’re really not cute at 4 AM when they’re hopping through my dreams or at 6, when I’m just drifting off and one of them decides to beat its foot loudly upon the floor, reminding me there are still words to be written.

I blame plot bunnies for the fact that I spent the entire month of January working on the story arcs for five different novels, unable to decide which one I really wanted to work on the most. There are now five first chapters written and still not a clear idea of who’s story I’ll actually spend the next few months working on.

They’re so different, but more than that, each one speaks to me in a different way.

In Rockin’ Ryker’s World there’s Jesse, who can pen lyrics like there’s no tomorrow but the words that matter, the conversations he needs to have with his bandmates and friends, those are the ones that have failed him. He’s running scared at the moment and I’d so curious to sit down and start writing up the chapter that drove him to that point.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how one wants to look at it, there’s Koda, a digital artist who decided to take part in an interesting little experiment that’s left him feeling like a fish out of water. It isn’t easy living with a stranger, as he’s very quickly finding out, and it’s not easy ignoring them either, especially when they are determined to get to know him. His story is roughly four chapters in, though the words are felling way more like ideas than fluid conversations.

And speaking of fluid, there’s Gypsy, my rather headstrong gender fluid character who’s fascination with the sideshow and performing led to a hasty wedding, a messy breakup, and an ex who can’t seem to stay away. Add to it a soon to be ex brother-in-law who’s seeking refuge at their old family home and what just might prove to be a budding relationship between them, and I’m certainly thrilled to jump into working on their story a little more. Filled with a bevy of characters who are based on people I’ve met in my travels that one is particularly dear to my heart.

Those three I think I could handle writing almost simultaneously putting one down when someone got quiet only to pick up the other and work on that for a bit, moving effortlessly between the three due to my familiarity with the characters, but….

Those plot bunnies

Those god damned demented bunnies won’t leave me alone.  

Somehow or another, during what was supposed to be a movie day, I started working on Takashi’s story. Now somehow or another, he and the Escort he’s falling for have to navigate these rather convoluted waters they’ve found themselves in to hopefully find a happy ending. Either that or the slush pile. I’m hoping it isn’t that though, I’m kind of curious to see where it goes.

The last plot bunny though, he’s…well…I’m still trying to determine if he’s inside the realm of possibility or not. This might be one of those stories that gets written purely for the fact that it won’t leave me alone, and then gets abandoned on a hard drive somewhere never to see the light of day. I’ve got a few manuscripts like that. On one hand, I always feel like I’m wasting my time working on something I never intend to show anyone, especially when I start thinking early that no, nope, not gonna share this one, but on the other hand, I feel compelled to write it, if only to purge it from my soul.

So here I sit, surrounded by five taunting, wiggling blot bunnies that are trying to make my green hair turn gray. Acme worm holes anyone, I could use a few if anyone has them? I could drop in a plot bunny and see where they might pop up in a year or two.