Tag: short story

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This checkin is late. And it’s late because NaNo has struck down my hubric back at me with a vicious counter-stroke in the form of flu.

Yes, I got sick. I spent all day yesterday vomiting (fun!) and most of today slowly returning to the land of the living. My older son also got sick yesterday afternoon, but he made a quicker turnaround than me. So that means that nothing got written for the last two days, and I took the day before that off from writing to reward myself with some gaming time.

But the reason for taking that day off (which has since become three days off) was because I’ve made excellent progress on my NaNoWriMo goals. I have completed:

  1. The Heresy Trial of Friar Travolo at 4,000 words
  2. Mr. Yamaguchi’s Late-Night Janitorial and Demon-Hunting Service at 3,500 words
  3. There Is No Such Place As Canada at 4,300 words

That’s three stories, and we’re only halfway through the month. The only remaining planned story is The Blasphemous, The Cruel, and the Weak, which I now have two weeks to complete. That should be plenty of time, though I still have to figure out what the actual plot of the story is.

Good luck to all the other NaNoWriMo’ers!

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It’s coming. Can you feel it? It sounds like thousands of keyboards being battered all at once, their keys clattering, crying, and falling silent. You can smell it on the wind. The smell of imagination, the incense of hope, and the bitter smoke of despair. The writers approach, their eyes wide, their fingers trembling, and on their lips the mantra: fifty thousand, fifty thousand, fifty thousand.

NaNoWriMo.

I’ve plunged into the madness of NaNoWriMo once before, and emerged, miraculously, victorious. I’m told there are not many that succeed on their first foray into that ravenous land. On that occasion I was writing a novel, The Failed Apostle, and I successfully penned its first 60,000 words that November. It was very hard. I was very glad I did it.

I am foolish enough to try again, after a fashion.

This time I do not have a novel which I would like to begin. I do, however, have another kid, and a larger and more pressing set of responsibilities. Examining my current projects and the realities of my schedule, I have put myself another, more realistic goal: I shall write four short stories in the month of November. One each week.

All together, these stories will probably not total more than 20,000 words—but this is hardly the point. As any short story writer will tell you, 2,000 words of short story may take as much effort as 20,000 words from a novel. Your canvas is smaller, and so your attention to detail must be greater. Under current conditions, writing a full rough draft of a story normally takes me much more than a week, so this will still be a significant challenge to my dedication and time. I think it will be worth it.

As with last time, I do not go into battle unprepared. I have chosen which stories I will write, and slotted them into a schedule.

  1. The Heresy Trial of Friar Travolo, about a monk who proves a thesis which is scandalous to the mathematical authorities of his day. This one is cheating, somewhat, since I already have it half-written. I do not care, though. It’s a difficult story for me to write, somewhat outside my usual oeuvre, and finishing it within its allotted week will be challenge enough.

  2. Mr. Yamamoto’s Night Janitorial and Demon-Hunting Service, about a young man who is trained to empty the trash bins and, if necessary, exorcise them. This one I have pretty clearly plotted in my head. It’s something of a satire.

  3. Whalesong, a story about (obviously) sunspots. This one is only a vague idea, yet.

  4. The Blasphemous, the Cruel, and the Weak. I have no idea what this one is about. I only have the title, which I love, but I still have to discover what the plot is.

Nor do I expect that I will have finished with these stories by the end of the month. It is enough that they be complete; making them be good is the task of the months to follow.

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I’m writing a story. My problem is that a big part of this story takes place in China, and outside of the usual clichés I know next to nothing about China.

Ignorance is not an unsolvable problem, of course. There are lots of books about China — I have two on my nightstand right now — and of course the internet is brimming with info. You can with a little reading and a little googling get enough of a feel for a place to write about it convincingly, or at least avoid looking like a fool.

But what you cannot get from books and googled images is insight. Even if the book you’re reading offers interesting insights, they’re somebody else’s insights, and nothing is worse than recycled insight. A revelation that somebody else has earned by living in and seeking to understand a place can only be a fact when it’s repeated to others, and by the time it comes third-hand it’s already a cliché.

Why do I need insight into China? Mostly it’s the structure of the story: the protagonist comes to China thinking that he’s looking for one thing, fails to find it, but is redirected to seeking something else instead. It would be nice if the protagonist’s failure and renewal were related in a deep and interesting way to the country that he’s visiting. The story doesn’t really require that his destination be China — it could be Vietnam or India or Brazil or any number of other places around the globe — but wherever it is, the place as presented in the story must seem authentic, and must relate organically to the character’s transformation. It will not do to have him visit Exotic Foreign Locale #12 and be impressed by the friendly but nondescript brown-skinned natives. I’m trying to be a little more original than that.

And that’s why I’m trawling my sources looking for the thing that’s going to turn him around. I don’t know what it is yet, but I trust that when I see it things will click and I’ll know how to finish my story.

(If you, by the way, have anything interesting along these lines to share, please do so in the comments. I can’t say what I’m looking for, but anything interesting and informative about the rapidly industrializing countries of Asia or Latin America would fit.)

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Tonight I just finished the first draft of a short story. Yeah!

Okay, that’s not such a big deal, since I’ve finished the first drafts of lots of stories, but this is the first one I’ve pulled off in a while. I spent most of the first part of this year writing a novel, then I took a brief break from writing, and the two stories I tried to finish after that just didn’t work out. But this one turned out well.

Granted, it’s a total mess right now, with terrible pacing, a nonsensical conclusion, and some heavyhanded speechifying in the middle. But: it’s a first draft. And it’s done.

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This makes two: Lights on the Horizon will be appearing tomorrow at Everyday Weirdness! I’ll update this post with a link once it appears.

This is a study in contrasts. The first story I sold was written about 24 hours before being submitted, and was submitted exactly once. The second story was written eight years ago, and has been submitted almost everywhere. There is a clear and valuable lesson here, but I’m too lazy to figure out what it is. You’re smart; I’m sure you can put it together.

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These are all for the same story, which I completed last summer:

It was well received here, but after some thought we have decided not to accept it for publication. this came very close. Very pretty :).

I quite liked this, but it felt a little insubstantial for this length, and my co-editors didn’t like it quite as much as I did.

Even though the narrative tone was more external or fable-esque than I usually prefer, I really enjoyed the first third or so of the story… I was hoping for something more character-centered… I hope you will feel free to submit again.

Your story was held for further consideration either by myself or my assistant and carefully read. I was intrigued by the idea behind this story and the style in which it was written, but on completing my reading ultimately decided I wasn’t compelled enough to make an offer to buy it.

My reaction to this is a mixture of pleasure at the positive reception, and annoyance at the lack of actual publication. Ah, well, such is the fate of a newbie writer. Once more into the breach…

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One of my favorite works of fantasy ever is Stephen King’s The Gunslinger, the first of his Dark Tower series. I’ll never forget the feel of that parched, cracked, and crumbling post-apocalyptic Western landscape, full of dust, sun, sage, guns and hard magic. I was captivated. The later books in the series took the shine off of it a little, but nothing could dampen the brilliance of that first outing.

So I loved The Hangman, up recently at Beneath Ceaseless Skies. It has much the same feel, but with a quieter and more terrifying story. It has man-eating trains. You’ll love it.

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Today must be a day for short story recommendations, because here I come with another: Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction by Jo Walton.

It’s a horror story, though it doesn’t look it on the surface. A moral horror story, which gets its teeth from the ethical dilemma that forms the climax. The protag has to decide. We all know what she should do, and we all know what we would do, because we are Good People Who Do The Right Thing. So it’s obvious what we would do. Right?

Right.

Like I said, a horror story.