Prompt: Every door in the world suddenly locks. Describe the aftermath.
Story: Every door in the world suddenly locked. Then everyone unlocked their doors, since they all still had their keys.
THE END
(Still looking for that NaNoWriMo story/idea/inspiration/haha I’m not panicking yet, no sir!)
With one week before NaNoWriMo begins and my idea still not quite pinned down I remain cool as a cucumber (which, as has been established, terrify cats for some reason). I’ve been here before and in my six previous attempts I never failed due to lack of idea.
I am starting to see vague outlines of something I might enjoy tackling in November. If nothing further materializes before next Sunday I will probably curl up in a ball, revive an old idea or in complete desperation use some sort of writing prompt, possibly even one of my own.
In the meantime, today I went to my first local NaNo event, a kick-off at Moose’s Pub in downtown Vancouver. After walking past it a thousand times I finally took the stairs down and went inside.
I came away with a snazzy Vancouver NaNo mug, a pin and four new writing buddies (the people sitting at the table with me). We chatted about writing, as one might expect, and it was interesting given the different genres we write in (horror, fantasy, science fiction and combinations thereof) and the age range, which probably spanned a good forty years. One guy, who said he writes non-fiction and who had not yet committed to NaNo–and who left early–may have accidentally stumbled upon the event, for all I know. Maybe he’s a Moose regular. It was slightly weird.
The rest of us enjoyed our food and drink and shared some of the usual frustrations and triumphs–the latter probably best highlighted by one of the participants actually having his 2009 NaNo novel published this year.
In all, it was an enjoyable outing and nice to meet others who share this zany hobby of mine. I plan on going to at least some of the write-ins during the month, too.
Now I just need to commit to that pesky and elusive idea.
I’m late with this update but that’s okay because all I have to report is the collection is being put on hold in anticipation of National Novel Writing Month 2015. Expect the next update (unless I feel wacky) to come sometime in December.
Speaking of NaNoWriMo, I’ve added back the word count widget to the main page of the blog in anticipation of my glory or shame.
Thirteen is the number of days before National Novel Writing Month 2015 begins. As has usually been the case since I started participating back in 2009, I have no idea what I am going to write about with less than two weeks to go.
As I have come up an idea every year I am not about to give in to panic.
My success rate of 3-3 might give someone of weaker constitution pause, but not me!
If the Conservatives win tomorrow’s election I am going to write about a post-apocalyptic Canada. EXCEPT IT WON’T BE FICTION. Dun dun dun!
But yeah, no idea yet, just a few vague notions dancing around the periphery of my brain, which is not a helpful place for them to be. Come on, notions, move out to where I can see you! Thanks.
Idea: A planet of talking cats. Novel name: Cat Fancy.
Pro: Would appeal to cats that enjoy reading novels
Con: Likely to get sued by owners of Cat Fancy magazine
Idea: A sequel to Moby Dick called Moby Duck. It features a duck.
Pro: Would appeal to giant white ducks and probably other ducks, too
Con: A bit niche without adding werewolves and/or vampires
Idea: Something intelligent and literary. You know, Booker Prize stuff.
Pro: A rich, nuanced story with lasting appeal that wins over critics and the book-buying public alike
Con: I could never write this
Idea: World of Warcraft fan fiction.
Pro: Even if only 1/10th of the WoW player base bought it, I’d be rich
Con: I could never finish writing this
Idea: Write something I know.
Pro: Material would have that ol’ ring of authenticity
Con: It would be WoW fan fiction. Or some schmuck trying to get a printer to work.
Idea: Something about parallel worlds.
Pro: I quite like the idea of parallel worlds/multiverse
Con: I tried this in 2013, lost a large chunk of my story and flamed out shortly after
This concludes my first force-myself-to-sit-down-and-brainstorm session. As brainstorms go, it was more of an intermittent drizzle but I still have sixteen days before the words need to start flowing so I’m at least several days from abject despair and/or panic.
It’s only two days later and another update? Crazy! But I am cheating a little because this is an update to say I’m removing “Stop That Cow!” from the list of stories in the Pairs of Shorts collection. It primarily comes down to having to sort out several logical inconsistencies (the vehicles/cow escaping that were mentioned in the previous post being only two of them). I have some ideas but for now I want to keep moving forward and that means switching to another story that is closer to completion. If I don’t work “Stop That Cow!” back into the mix I’ll have to drop another story or add another story to keep the title of the collection intact. Or I could come up with a different title. So many decisions.
I will pick the next story to polish soon™ though for the next few weeks my main focus is going to be preparation for National Novel Writing Month 2015 and perhaps doing a few more writing prompts to get the ol’ creative juices flowing all over the place.
This week I spent a surprisingly long stretch of time working over just a few paragraphs in “Stop That Cow!” It’s right after the farm couple discover one of their cows is missing and based on feedback of a friend, I tried smoothing out what he felt were logical inconsistencies with the scene in terms of how the cow could have escaped and the number of vehicles readily available at a small family farm. In the original draft I had two vehicles–a truck and a tractor. The truck was in the shop for repair so the protagonist uses the tractor to slowly look for the missing cow.
The point was raised that they would have more vehicles, especially being on a farm. Because a large chunk of the story rests on the protagonist driving the tractor I had to first come up with other vehicles they might logically have and then devise reasons why they couldn’t use any of them except the tractor.
I added a station wagon that had its engine sabotaged, then decided that was too sinister, so I changed it to mysteriously not starting. That worked better but wouldn’t they still have another truck or something? Maybe. At that I was ready to run the story over with a combine.
I’m still pondering that.
I think I may shift over to National Novel Writing Month preparation instead.
Stupid cow.
I’ve been thinking about “Hello?”, the story I’ve dropped from my 10 Pairs of Shorts collection. It was described as “garbage” by someone who has offered feedback on other stories of mine and while I don’t think it’s that bad, it is a rather half-baked (if lengthy) writing exercise that would need multiple drafts and some major work to make it live up to the potential of its high concept. In the end I decided it would be more effort than it was worth vs. writing a new story from scratch.
But I like the high concept, enough to at least give some thought to how I would fix the story, if I decided to do so. The concept is something that’s been used many times in books and films: someone finds him or herself the last person on the planet (seemingly), and tries to learn what has happened to everyone else while simultaneously dealing with the inevitable crushing loneliness.
When I wrote the exercise I framed the plot in fairly simple terms: What would be the mental progression of someone who finds himself truly alone? I took a scattershot approach, with the protagonist having good days and bad days, spending some days in despair and others conducting methodical scouting expeditions looking for others. He made some efforts to survive but was clearly no doomsday prepper. I enjoyed exploring these things but in the end the result was unfocused and had some logical inconsistencies that were never addressed because I never did further drafts on the story (I had planned on finally doing this when preparing it for the collection).
What would I do if I decided to fix the story instead of scrapping it and starting over? A few things come to mind:
Of these things, the flowchart intrigues me enough that I am tempted to give it a shot. It would be a lot of work and something I’d probably not do without committing to a full rewrite. But it’s tempting, like a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie.
I am going over the feedback for “Stop That Cow!” and working on that story’s second draft.
Once I’ve done that I’ll move on to the next story (TBD) and do the same. I’ll have this story chosen by next week’s update in my ongoing effort to have something new to report every week, no matter how trivial it may be.
After getting these two stories into shape as second drafts, and if I still have time before National Novel Writing Month commences, I may dive into writing one of the new stories for the collection since the worst that could happen is I produce something terrible, become horribly depressed and vow never to write again. But you never know until you try.
For a good long spell one of my favorite ways of developing a short story was not to think of a neat idea or character but rather to come up with a title and then fashion some kind of story to go with it. This is not a great way to produce rich, nuanced tales but I got a few decent ones from some rather dubious titles. “Learning to Die” is a simple play on the song “Learning to Fly” (Pink Floyd or Tom Petty version, take your pick) and that turned out nicely. I was going to offer another example or two but I seem to have forgotten the names. Yes, that’s it.
On the other hand, here are some titles so bland or plain terrible I have yet to turn the overwhelming majority of them into stories and hopefully never will. These are examples of what happens when brainstorms are more like intermittent showers. I’ve added notes for spice, variety and to in some tiny way justify another list post.
The list is honking long, so continue reading after the break.
After discussing it with a Trusted Source™ who has provided feedback on some stories, I’ve elected to tackle a rewrite of Stop That Cow! as the first major step in my renewed effort to get this collection out the door and into the wild, where it will be savaged by werewolves and witches and people who thought they were buying an underwear collection.
The same trusted source also felt Hello? was unworthy of the collection in its present state and after some discussion I came to the conclusion that a rewrite would involve too much work to be a worthwhile investment. The list of stories now looks like this (and is subject to further and possibly whimsical) changes:
As promised, here is the final selection of stories, first by category and next as a single, magical list of titles.
Definitely in:
Learning to Die
Slice of Life
The Cobalt Sensation
The Chicago 8 vs. Time
The Chicago 8 vs. Armageddon
Hello?
The Lunch Gnome
The Dream of the Buckford County Church
Possibly in:
Cervidae
The Sometimes Island
At the Door
Killing Time
Laura
The Graffiti Avenger
Lily Tries to Go Shopping
Follow the Tracks
Sammy Takes a Dive
Would require re-working/additional drafts:
The Broken Bridge
Stop That Cow!
Rainy Day
Trolling for Fun and Profit
The Invisible Weekend
Unfinished:
Dented World
The Box on the Bench
Not written:
Regina and the Shortcut with Teeth
Sanity Road/Bent Metal
The Capitol Dome
Swimmers and Fog
Picture This
And the full list below:
This makes for a grand total of twenty stories or ten pairs of shorts, a nice, even number.
My next weekly update will finalize the stories I want to work on completing next. I reserve the right to put this off if I win Wednesday’s $16 million 6/49 jackpot.