How long have you been working on your current story?

I'll split this into two questions: how long ago did you first think of your current story, and how long ago did you begin writing it?

(If you're writing more than one story right now, answer this for the one you last edited or expanded. If you've thought of more than one story, but you haven't even begun writing any of them, start writing now!)

I had the rudiments of the idea for Dulling the Pain back when I was in high school, but I didn't think it was a very good idea at the time. I returned to it last summer, and have been working on and off on it ever since. (It's currently the longest story I've ever written.)

edited 7th Oct '11 11:06:34 PM by feotakahari

Let's see... Knightfall is about five years old (hence why it sucks), Soul is about a year, Innocence Lost is somewhere between 6 months and a year, and American Armor is about 3 months old.

I started writing Soul last year, but I haven't done much with it. Innocence Lost just has some worldbuilidng documentation done, while everything related to Knightfall is currently in limbo. Haven't started the American Armor...

edited 7th Oct '11 11:15:42 PM by USAF713

I'm not working specifically on anything right now, exactly. I have a couple of ideas on the backburner, but the only things I've written recently are supplementary materials to my comics. For the record, I began said comics in 2003 and concluded the Grand Finale in December of last year (obviously, I did plenty of other things during that time as well).

The idea I'm most likely to start writing next has been in my head for about three years, though.

Good idea for a thread!

A year and a half.

I posted the initial idea for my story on this forum on March 10, 2010 (I'm pretty sure that was the date) and started working on it a few days later.

Probably around 6 months, though I carried a couple ideas over from doodles I made like nine years ago.

I started playing with the idea in 2002, but the attemnpts were so unfocused and intermittent I'm not sure they count. Anyhow, I got serious about it in 2009 or so...I was laid low that summer with a serious case of dehydration and overwork (oh, the things we do to pay our bills), and had a very epic fever dream. The image that sticks with me;

A woman stands on a street corner, half-shrouded in mist. She's frail and thin, clad in well-worn clothes that speak of the Victorian era...but what arrests the attention are the eyes, wide and blue and full of sorrow. She's on her way to something, hands folded before her as if she's about to pray; her gaze speaks of bruised ideals sheathed in brittle courtesy, her form of beauty marred by overwork.

Who she is, why she's sad, what she's about to do...I'm still figuring that out. But that's my job, I figure.

The only one I'm actually writing, I started in...June of this year, and thought up only about a week before that. The one that I have some work done on but am not actively writing I came up with around January. I have things that I intend to write sometime that I've been thinking about for six years, but of course these have been mangled and swapped into unrecognizability from their original forms.

I first had the dream that inspired my current story in the summer of 2008. I started writing it for real for Na No Wri Mo 2009 and I'm still writing it. I would have finished it earlier if I didn't take so long breaks from it.

Manifestation Files:

Idea: Mid-June or so.

Story: Mid-June, around the 16th.

Endless Conflict:

Conception: Approximately November 2001, possibly earlier but I'm not sure. (Fun fact: It remained untitled until I was 20 over 4 years later.)

Actual put down to paper: January 2010.

Towards the Valley of Flowers

Conception: late last year.

Actual put down to paper: To Be Announced.

Three or four years since I started both my stories, though writing the actual books has...stalled.

It had to have been after May 2006, because the episode of inspiration didn't happen until then.

I know that the main story idea came into fruition somewhere during 9th grade, which was 2007-08. Although I had the prologue as the main story way before that.

Then, in the end of tenth grade, 09, I finally wrote out the outline for Cakman to read.

So...yeah. 4 years or so.

Idea: Hard to say. My current work is a combination of several ideas I've had throughout many years. The central idea was almost 4 years ago, but some of the characters are over 7 years old.

Story: 3 years, approximately. I've written 2 novels with around 90000 words each and 2 chapters of the third book, but haven't published anything yet.

edited 8th Oct '11 7:48:23 AM by Teraus

I started planning a story that would eventually lead to establishing the setting that I would use in 2008. Then in early-mid 2009 I actually started getting ideas for what would eventually become the Noble Series.

I finally started writing the first book in May of this year. I have yet to finish the second chapter. -_-

edited 8th Oct '11 7:49:41 AM by VolatileChills

I started working on my main work about four years ago, but back then it was completely different from what it is now. Also at the start I was very slow on the actual writing. Proper work started about two years ago.

Shining Over Heaven and Adamant were once a single large story called Aether that came into being about sixteen months ago. About three months ago, they split off and Aether became the name for the entire 'verse that they and a few other ideas take place in.

The characters, however, are between one and four years old and have gone through countless backstory, appearance, name, personality, and general character changes with my maturation as a writer. My oldest character (in RL) in this work was created when I was twelve years old, and pretty much every other character has evolved to the point that they barely resemble the person they started as.

Counter Soul has been going for almost two years.

Counter Soul: Progeny: one year.

Artificial Intelligence: one year.

The Fool's Journey: a few months.

And then there is an untitled works that is still in the probation stage.

The Chaos: Counting all the rewrites I've done...eh....I say about four years.

Summer's Vengeance: On and off for three years.

On Uncomfortable Things: A Series of Semi-Fantastical Events: A couple months.

Hunting the Unicorn: Since late April, so just over five months.

Cawley has been bouncing around in my head since 2008-ish, but in radically different form. He's the product of teenage insecurity over religion/spiritual things, and his arc/world changed with my own beliefs. He finally made it to paper (well, a text editor) this summer.

In The Service and related stories have existed in written form for a minimum of 13 months. A failed first draft existed at least a month previously to when I posted Monsters so call it 14 months.

But really, the story is much older than that. It predates my being a part of the fandom it is written for; I daresay it might predate the existence of Lyrical Nanoha general (I'm a little hazy on dates for the primogenitor works since...jesus, I was in high school then) and I know it definitely predates Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Striker S. (Scratch the previous comment here, I did the math.) It's been a minimum of nine years, more probably ten or eleven. It has gone through a number of fandoms and original concepts, by many different names (Cold Hands, the working-titled Shiori, maybe a half-dozen others). I have in some way been working with this general concept and theme since probably my junior year of high school.

Night Life, by contrast, is barely three months old in both conception and written existence. And the possible but probably not going to happen Ten Years Late is younger than that.

edited 8th Oct '11 2:32:49 PM by Night

The Midgard-verse began back when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade. It is about 15 years now. It has changed and widened something enormously: Setting, genre, cast, time-period...

The Sixth Seal Is Broken is only months old and has therfore hardly changed at all.

The Sagas is a few years old and have changed quite a bit...

Thought I had a lock on this one. Under World got started circa 1998, while I was in grad school and had access to a university library for the research. If I ever get the time, I'll finish putting the story down on paper.

Well...there's this fantasy series that I worked for years. If I should call my current project the changed form of that one, it should make it six years.

The first draft of Atlantia was Na No Wri Mo '05. And it's still going.