Things are getting closer with the League Entertainment book. Check out the “Member Blogs” section…
And, soon…
Things are getting closer with the League Entertainment book. Check out the “Member Blogs” section…
And, soon…
A few days ago, I had a breakthrough with my latest novel, currently called A Chance Damnation. I had been plugging along with more or less success, turning the occasional nice phrase, moving the plot along, etc.
Then, suddenly, I had no connection to my characters. I couldn’t feel them, couldn’t imagine what they were doing. I couldn’t hear their voices in my head. Every line was pulling teeth.
But when I went back and read those days, I found the writing was, if not pretty, compelling.
Today, I wrote almost 10K. It took a while, but it all came out. Again, not as pretty as the earlier stuff, but I found out things I had no idea were in my brain…and yet had set up in previous sections.
What happened? I have no idea. Usually, when this kind of thing happens, I throw my hands up in the air and cry “Yield! Uncle!” Since I started doing NaNoWriMos, I’ve cut back on that kind of thing, but this one was pretty severe (admittedly, they all feel pretty severe).
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During the course of a pretty bad month, I managed to finish the rest of the Taltos books out to date. I ended up with some guesses; don’t read any more if you don’t want to hear anybody else’s thoughts on the matter.
No proof, just speculation. And incomplete speculation, at that.
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I’ve been writing a lot of short stories lately, pushed by something that Dean Wesley Smith said at the workshop – at one point, he wrote 44 short stories in a row, one a week. Another thing he said: if it takes more than a few hours to write a short story, you’re wasting your time as a writer. (I have a feeling he said it better than that, but you get the point.)
Hell, I said. If not now, when?
So I’ve been trying to write a new story every Tuesday. That makes three new stories in three weeks.
I didn’t get it done until Wednesday this week, mostly because I was trying something new (deliberate world building), and I started with a setting before I had a plot in mind, and it thhhhhhbbbbt did not work. I started over on Tuesday night with a plot, then (look over there! Baby wolf!) sneaked it into the setting. I don’t know why it made such a big difference, but it did.
What I’ve learned so far: it’s not that hard, once you’re at a certain point in your skill set, to turn out a short story quickly. What you need to know:
Sorry. Simple statements of complex life lessons, as a writer. But it’s not like you have to be a Master of the Short Story in order to start writing them, just have the (extremely complicated) basics down. These last three stories aren’t great, but they’re not half-bad, either. If I’d come across them in a magazine, I would have enjoyed them.
Also, no matter how bad you think a story is, finish it. This last one, I was cursing myself for a fool and an idiot until I got almost to the end, and then I liked it. For me, it has a touch of grace, a completely undeserved gift from a higher (if nastier) being. Not a deus ex machina ending, but a mysterious judgement that the main character has difficulty accepting. I like that. Okay, there are a couple of points I’m still not sure about, but I’ll let a few rejection slips talk me out of them instead of second-guessing myself before I even send it.
The last thing is that the patterns that I find in the subjects I pick is slightly horrifying. Not the plots, but the themes. Really? Is this what I think about? But maybe it’s a type of therapy, burning out my issues in stories much like Picasso painted through his Blue Period, and when they’re gone, I’ll never be able to write this type of story again, so I may as well use them up while I’ve still got them.
So, total novels out: 2.
Total short stories out: 9. Wish me luck; I’m on the short list on one of them.
I think my goal for next week is to write sci-fi with an actual what-if idea. I don’t write much of it, mostly low (non-world-building) fantasy. Fantasy set in a sci-fi world won’t count, I think, unless I get stuck on an idea, and that that’s what I get.
Oh, and a note: if you start writing a short story, and it turns into a novel, and you’re not under contract for a short story? So what? The novel I’m working on now started out just like that.
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