Category: creative writing

This thing I started writing a few weeks ago, which was supposed to be part of a short story collection, has completely taken on its own life, and instead of being a quick 3500 word thing about a single event, it’s become (as of today) a little over 21,000 words about the fragility of friendship, and what that means when we’re at that weird time in our lives between elementary and middle school.

I’m pretty sure that I’m in the middle of the second act, so maybe this will finish up in another 10,000 words or so. Once that happens, I’ll set it aside for a couple of days to let my brain get some perspective, and then I’ll go over the whole thing to see if it even holds together.

I started writing this because I loved Stranger Things so much, and it made me remember a bunch of stuff about the summer of 1983, when I was 11 years-old. It was the first time I had a real crush on anyone, the first time I learned that adults can be horrible even though they’re adults and they aren’t supposed to be horrible (especially to kids), and what it’s like to lose friends who are important to us.

Some of it is true, most of it isn’t, but all of it has been incredibly rewarding and fun to write. Today, I’m finishing up a thing is on one level about making a sandcastle, but is also about something else entirely. I thought I’d share some of it:

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I opened the window in my office, and moved my desk next to it. It’s hot outside, but there’s a gentle breeze that cools the air just enough to be comfortable when it comes through the screen. It’s quiet in my neighborhood today, except for a lawnmower up the street, and I can hear the occasional train go by, up near the river.

I read a story once about a kid who grew up in a small town, and slept with the windows open so he could hear the trains when they went by a few miles away. He worried that he’d be stuck in his town forever, and those trains represented freedom and a world that existed beyond the county limits.

I can’t remember the name of that story. Maybe I made it up. I’ve always wanted to tell a story about a kid who wants to get out of his small town, but can’t find his way. You know, like everyone else in the world.

Anne’s out of town, so I made a bunch of taco stuff on Monday, and I’ve been having tacos every night, because I’m one of those people who would wear the same thing every day if I could, on account of efficiency. Did you know that tacos were invented by the Dutch? Look it up. It isn’t true.

I had another audition, for a show that I love, playing a character I’d love to play. This is not a repost. It was yesterday. I didn’t suck, and now I’m trying hard not to let myself hope, but I’m secretly hoping.

I wrote 1300 words today, and finished with just over 15,000 on this story I’ve been telling for about a ten days. I thought it was going to be a 2000 word blog post or two, but it just kept on going, and now it’s looking like it will be a novella. It doesn’t have a title, but it’s set in 1983 (thank you, Stranger Things) so I call it 83 until I can think of a title. Here’s a little bit:

Until I sat down to recall this particular story, about this particular summer, I hadn’t thought about these guys, who I lost touch with over thirty years ago, in at least a decade. They are all frozen in amber at that age, during this moment of our lives. Stephen’s house has lots of dark wood on the walls, heavy gold/yellow/brown carpet, and an orange, conical, metal fireplace in the living room that looked like it was from some version of the future, imagined in the 70s. His television is big tube model, in a wooden cabinet with stereo speakers on either side. There’s a cable TV box on top that switches to ON TV and nothing else. His mom’s stereo takes up several shelves next to the TV, and she has a lot of record albums. Stephen only owns three that I can remember: Def Leppard’s Pyromania, Foreigner’s Four, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. They were all given to him by his older sister, who I’m now realizing was cooler than any of us thought when we were kids.

Some of that is true, most of it is from my imagination. This whole story is like that, and it’s been a lot of fun to write. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, or if it even works as a single narrative, but it’s something I need to do, so I’m doing it until it’s finished.

My dogs are keeping me company today. Marlowe is sleeping on the couch behind me, and Seamus is on the floor. Whenever I get up to refill my water or leave the room for some reason, he follows me, staying close. My dogs make me feel loved, and valued, and I allow myself to believe it is not just because I provide the food and walks.

I’m walking them every day, and running as much as I can. It hasn’t been that much, because it’s been really hot and something that my body hates is pollenating, but I’m getting about 7000 steps every day, and earning a small scoop of ice cream with dinner. I hit my target weight this morning, though I think I need to shave off one more pound to ensure that I stay here. Weight is just a number, and it really isn’t everything, but my scale is sort of like a score for me in my reboot, and I feel like I cleared a level today.

This story I’m writing is entirely fiction, but it’s based on real things that I did and real people I knew when I was a kid. It’s been a lot of fun to remember things the way they were, and then retell them the way I want to. It’s fun to think about kids I knew when we were eleven and twelve, because I haven’t thought about them in thirty years. Part of me really wants to step through time to go back to the summer I set this story in, so I can see the places I’m remembering and describing. Part of me wants to go back to those places right now, but I won’t, because doing that would tear apart the picture I have in my memory, and I want to keep it exactly the way it was.

I don’t know why it was important to me to start this off with the bit about my window, but it seemed relevant a little bit ago. Now it’s just a detail that ended up not being necessary.

But working with the window open is nice. I can smell flowers and wet dirt and cut grass, and it helps me to remember.

I wish time wasn’t linear.

This thing I’m working on has lived in my head for about a year, so it’s kind of stale and not as interesting to me as it was when I had the idea. But I decided that writing and finishing what I start is really important, just like knowing the difference between “I’m bored with this” and “this is genuinely not good” when assessing whether or not to keep on going.

There’s a point in my creative writing process where I always decide that the whole thing is shit, I am shit, the world is shit, and I should set the whole thing on fire. It took me years to realize that it’s just a normal part of my process, and it’s more the frustration of wanting the thing to be finished, than it is any of the other things. I used to worry that this thing sucked, and therefore I sucked, and Carrie’s mom was right: they’re all gonna laugh at me.

But this is the hard part of the work (and it’s still better work than real work) and everything is worth doing is hard. Getting past this, I think, is what separates professionals from everyone else. I’ve committed to finishing a book of short fiction by the end of this year, and the only way that happens is when I do the work.

So I’m doing the work.

The big challenge today, so I could get past this step where I hate it and hate myself and hate the whole idea, was forcing the main character to tell me what his primary conflict was, and why he cared about The Thing He Cares About (and, consequently, why we are supposed to care about it). So I had him ask a character who wants something from him, literally, “Why me?” And we found out, together, what was missing, and what was making me hate this thing. Now that the question is answered, I can finish the draft I didn’t write very long today. It was only a few hours of work, and I only got 470 words down when I clicked save for the day, but that’s more than I had before I started. And, to be honest, once I got into this scene that is forced me to define exactly what was missing from my protagonist, it was really fun to do the work.

At the moment, this draft is mostly crap. But it’s crap I can fix and turn into something I’m proud of, instead of a series of blank pages.

So.

I screencapped the title image from MetroLyrics, because I thought it looked cool.

I’m taking a little victory lap here, because I just finished the second draft on a short story that I’ve been mucking about with for a long time. It’s no long — just over 3800 words — and it’s called The Magician’s Path.

Here’s a little bit:

The Magician sat alone in his study, and practiced his magic. He conjured small creatures who existed briefly before vanishing in a burst of fragrant smoke. He extinguished the torches with the wave of one hand, then drove the darkness away with the other. His magic was passable, and he was quite good at it, but the Magician wanted to be a true Wizard, and to become a true Wizard, he needed an apprentice to train.

In those days, though, an apprentice could not be recruited or even sought out. In those days, an apprentice had to come to a magician of his own volition, and ask to be trained. It was through the training that the apprentice would become a magician, and the magician a Wizard.

The Magician spent many years perfecting his tricks, and understanding the ways of magic. When a young apprentice finally appeared at his door, the Magician would be ready.

The year was young, though winter was at its deepest and coldest when the boy arrived. He was very young, and though the Magician had waited so very long, he was not sure that one so young could be taught, that one so young would be willing to do the challenging and unrewarding work that went into mastering magics. He told the boy these things, but the boy pleaded with him. “I am very young, but I am honest and dedicated,” the boy said. “I will study and I will learn and I will work as hard as I must.”

My instinct as a blogger (I’ve been at this thing for over 15 years) is to publish the whole thing right now, because I like it, I’m excited about it, and I want to share it. But my instinct as a writer is to sit back on it for a little bit, get into the next thing, and then come back to this for one final pass before I release it.

It isn’t a lot, but it’s something where there wasn’t something before, and it’s something that I started and finished. I’m not gonna lie, Marge: I feel pretty good right now, and I haven’t felt pretty good in a long time.

So here I am. I finally have the time and the opportunity to write some fiction. My whiteboard is nearly full of one-liners and bullet points, and now it’s just time to pick one and finish the first draft.

And so, of course, I don’t want to make a choice. I don’t want to commit to one because WHAT IF IT’S TERRIBLE AND ALL OF THIS IS A WASTE OF TIME screams my stupid idiot brain.

But I will. Maybe it’ll be the zombie thing that’s been around for a long time, even though I’m super done with zombies, because the zombies aren’t what the story is about. Or maybe it’ll be the thing that’s kind of a Twilight Zone thing. Or the thing that I started in January, stalled out on, and lost interest in finishing because of reasons.

Yeah, it’ll probably be that one because there’s a lot of work in it already, and even though I don’t like where it is, I can get it to where it needs to be. That’s the key and the real secret to this whole thing: even when you want to stop and give up and do something else, you keep on going because nobody sits down and does ten thousand words at one go that can be published exactly as they are.

So there’s a little pep talk that I needed to give myself. Maybe it’ll help someone else who is struggling with something similar.

Keep reading, if you want to experience some flash fiction I wrote to keep myself engaged and in some kind of shape while I was working on Tabletop.

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