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.
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.
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.
Yes, a weekly update to guilt me into making progress at least once every seven days or face the self-imposed shame of having not done so*.
My current task is to finally set down the actual stories to include based on how well they fit together, quality (fewer and better is preferable to the alternative), current state (third draft vs. unfinished, etc.) and so forth. Here’s how they stand now:
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
Not included:
Green Revolution
Hot Dog
Noises
Sing, Toaster, Sing
The Downside
Transformations
The Amorphous Baby
A Pod with a View
Big Green Monster That Sat on Cleveland
Downside
The Little Boy Who Rode a Green Bike
The “Not Written” category consists of story ideas and in some cases actual scenes. I’d probably only include something from this group if I really felt the collection was going to be too short. The chance of the collection being too short is zero, however, so these are really more “ideas to pursue at some vague time in the future.”
The “Not Included” stories are unfinished, don’t fit well or are just plain not very good, but I wrote them and considered them.
Having a solid base of eight stories to start with is encouraging. The next weekly update will be The Great Winnowing and Final Selection. After that, maybe some actual writing.
* given the microscopically tiny readership of this blog, it would definitely be self-imposed shame. The Jetpack plugin informs me that yesterday, September 11, 2015, this site had zero visitors. According to science you can’t get lower views than that without some kind of quantum trickery.
Long ago, in the days of yore, or more specifically, on December 31 2013 I announced my intention to gather a bunch of short stories into a collection I would self-publish. Here is the relevant part of that post as a refresher:
In 2014 (one day from now, though this is not something that will actually be happening tomorrow, barring some kind of time travel trickery) I will be self-publishing my first short story collection. After looking over the collected stories I have written and weeding out those either not ready or not up to par I have settled on twenty for a collection that will be titled 10 Pairs of Shorts. Clever, eh?
And now, here is an update as of September 3, 2015, in convenient list form:
The good news is enough of the stories are ready to give me a little momentum. Apart from that I promise nothing except to report back in exactly one year with a progress report. Actually, I have offer one more promise: a more detailed status report sometime in the next few days, barring illness (I am in fact, not feeling well. I blame mass transit as always).
It’s time for another update on my short story collection 10 Pairs of Shorts.
This thing is taking a lot longer to assemble than expected. I wish I had a sassy writing robot to help me. Or a million dollars. Both would be neat.
As of today I have these stories more or less ready to go:
Even if I add another to the list at the rate of one per week that still means the collection won’t be fully assembled until around May. Not that it’s a race. But like Kirk to Khan, it tasks me.
I’ll pick the next story for revision tomorrow and hopefully find it perfect as written.
Two items of note for my short story collection 10 Pairs of Shorts:
1. I have concept art for the cover. Even ebooks need covers. I’m hoping to have something a little more professional than some self-published books. I’m not suggesting the below is not professional by example. I mean, there is no Comic Sans used at all. Still.
2. Another story is more or less ready for the collection, bringing the total up to six of 20 or three pairs of shorts. I hope to have another half-pair ready by next week.
In 2014 (one day from now, though this is not something that will actually be happening tomorrow, barring some kind of time travel trickery) I will be self-publishing my first short story collection. After looking over the collected stories I have written and weeding out those either not ready or not up to par I have settled on twenty for a collection that will be titled 10 Pairs of Shorts. Clever, eh? Here are the stories:
This list is subject to change on my whim but I am fairly certain I will stick with this selection.
Here are some broad classifications:
You can see where my wheelhouse is. I love me some weird stories.
The twenty titles are in various states of completion, ranging from ready to go to “this is a neat idea”. The breakdown:
It’s possible I may drop the two unwritten stories in exchange for others already completed, other entirely new stories or for nothing at all, with the collection re-titled 9 Pairs of Shorts as a result.
I don’t have a firm date for publication beyond 2014 but will post updates occasionally on my progress in getting there, with a big glitzy announcement when the happy day arrives and I start demanding all of my friends prove their friendship through purchasing as many copies of the collection as they can comfortably afford.