Month: February 2020

I’ll post a more detailed February update next week, but at this point, February, like January was a bit of a mixed month. I’m beginning to think that’s the way of the world: some good, and some not so good.

Last week’s short story, is a case in point. It was my forty-third consecutive story in the one-a-week challenge, and came together pretty well, except for the ending, which seemed a bit flat to me.

After I’d finished, I went through a little angst about it. Should I have outlined, and come up with a better ending? The end of that road is insanity, and there are some in my family who will comment that I’m only a short drive away! The thing is, if I rewrite the ending whole chunks of the main part of the story need to change or leave, and then it’s not the same story.

In the end, I decided to leave it alone and maybe one day I’ll write the other version. It won’t be this week. This week I’m back with Tiswin my Mage Weaver.

All I know at the moment is it snowed last night in Cloudcroft. I had the usual moment of doubt about where the story’s going and then this morning I was reading the Success Principles by Jack Canfield. At the start of one section there’s a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.:

Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.

I think that’s a great statement for everyone who writes into the dark.

I wonder if we ever really finish a story.

What I mean by that is something I’ve noticed during the short story challenge. I’ll finish the story, put it aside for a while. Sometimes only an hour or so if I’m close to the deadline. After that break I’ll read through, correct spelling and punctuation (I have a habit of throwing commas in everywhere during my first draft – usually when I pause the typing to frame the next sentence or paragraph. Probably ninety-percent of these get weeded out as I cycle through the story, but there are always a few that hide until the last minute), and tidy up any gaps or discrepancies I spot.

Very often, and this week’s story is a good example, I’ll send the story out, and then it’s like my mind looks at it from a different angle and says: Well, if you’d done it that way, the action would have started several pages sooner, and . . .

By this time I’m not sure if it’s the creative voice offering a solution to make the story better, or critical voice offering judgement to stop the story being submitted somewhere.

Too late critical 🙂

I may rework that story, but not this week. This week there’s a new story. It’s not much more than a fragment of an idea at the moment, but I will warn anyone reading this, that if I offer you a cupcake with icing, be very careful!

There were two separate and unconnected events that triggered this post. The first was a post by Dean Wesley Smith about deadlines helping overcome the fear of finishing a work, or submitting it, or publishing. The second was a comment on my sister’s blog where she talked about having several pieces of tapestry in her studio, all not quite finished and how having deadlines for exhibitions and contests provides the driver to make us finish.

I think it’s a multiple step process. About two years ago, when I decided I really needed to take my writing seriously I had six or seven short stories in various stages of completion. It was about the time I discovered, or maybe re-discovered, Heinlein’s Rules and it’s the second rule that applies here: You must finish what you start. I may come back to Heinlein’s Rules, but a lot of writers better than I am, and with more experience have written pages about those rules, so don’t hold your breath. Anyway, I spent a month going back and finishing those stories. They’re in a folder on a hard drive somewhere, and that’s where most of them should stay.

As I mentioned back in November, I began the short story challenge back in April. The weekly deadline of Sunday Midnight Pacific Time to get the story delivered is a powerful motivator, especially when linked to a long running streak. There’s been more than one occasion where I’m literally dozing over the keyboard after midnight Central Time (still got two hours because the deadline is Pacific 🙂 ), to get the story finished, read through and sent off.

I finished story forty-one this past weekend. Now I just have to apply those same principles to the novel I have in progress because there’s no external deadline. And that can be the real challenge.

I’ve been studying some techniques for writing faster and retaining quality. It’s been an interesting exercise and last week’s short story came together really fast. That may also have had something to do with the fact I could “see” the whole story in my head when I started writing, which doesn’t happen often.

This week isn’t going so well, partly, I think because I’m experimenting. I’ve never written anything that could be considered steampunk, and decided that maybe it was time to try. I’ll let you know how that goes.

More next week, once I’ve worked out where this story’s headed.