StoryADay, Day 3 - My First Drabble

Today's StoryADay challenge was to write a drabble. A drabble is a story of 100 words. This is what I ended up with for my first attempt. Your feedback would be appreciated:

When I Became

“First, there must always be magic,” she said. 

She glowed in concentration as she held my hand. Her power searched through me for whatever power of mine lay dormant. I hadn't believed when she told me I had something, but she'd since taught me trust. 

Then came the moment I became something else, something new. It was so distinct. It felt like both a tearing and an awakening. It was only then I realized I wasn't ready.

It terrified me.

She recoiled. So I was powerful, then.

Since I could, I rose into the air and decided to take everything.

It's the Joy, Stupid

Ernest Cline speaks at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC, 4/20/2016

I'm a writer who isn't writing. For the last several weeks I've been in a rut, possibly due to the umpteen rejections I've been receiving, perhaps due to mental fatigue, perhaps due to a lack of motivation. This period follows an intensely productive period where I started and finished half a dozen stories, took a class, and attended a workshop.

Then, kablooey.

I hit the proverbial wall. My motivation dried up. My creativity went dormant. 

Last night I may have gone and gotten myself all reinvigorated. I listened to Ernest Cline speak at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC. If you're not familiar with him, you should know he's the author of Ready Player One, a fantastic book that is essentially Charlie and the Chocolate Factory except it involves virtual reality instead of a chocolate factory and the contestants must know all kinds of stuff about the 80's.

Cline told his "origin story". He grew up on a farm in the 80's in the same pop culture I did. He wrote a sequel to Buckaroo Banzai for fun. He wrote a movie entitled Fanboys about being a huge Star Wars nerd...and it got made! He wrote RPO, then sold the rights for both the novel AND the film within a 48-hour period! He set up a brilliant scavenger hunt contest with clues in his book but didn't tell anyone until the eve of its paperback release. The grand prize was a DeLorean. Stephen Spirlberg's directing the RPO movie. His second book, Armada, is a bestseller right now.

As I listened to him speak, I started to get a little annoyed about how much he was talking about himself. It then dawned on me that of course he was talking about himself because that's why the people came to see him speak (some drove as many as 5 hours). It then dawned on me that the reason I was getting annoyed was because I was straight up jealous! Ernest Cline is living my frickin' dream.

His talk was full of absolute joy, with the primary theme being, "Can you believe all this awesome stuff is actually happening to a schlub like me?"

At one point he stopped to say that he isn't able to write for some imaginary audience. He writes things that, as a reader, HE would find awesome and exciting and cool. 

By golly, that's why I do it. That's what I'd forgotten. That's what I'm going to do again.

It's the joy, stupid.

Written April 20, 2016, but posted later due to life and reasons.

StoryADay, Day 1

Tonight I started the StoryADay challenge. The challenge is to write a story every day for the month of May. Details can be found here.

The first challenge was to write a story in 30 minutes, about a character created with traits you like to read about. The story should explore the idea of something that character would never ever do, while putting them in a situation where they are faced with the choice of having to do that thing. All this must be accomplished in 30 minutes, no more.

I did it. I have a complete story that I'd say is a solid first draft. It may be one of the scariest things I've ever written. My character is one whose life is about taking care of kids. He's a Cub Scout Pack Leader, on a camping trip with his Pack. Things go horribly wrong and he has to make a terrible choice.

A couple of things I learned:

1. The StoryADay folks did a good job setting up a well-structured prompt. The time limit and the instructions on how to handle it were great.
2. A story can be written in 30 minutes.
3. I experimented with what I thought was Hemingway's suggestion to write drunk. As I researched to write this post, it looks like that quote might've been incorrectly attributed to him. In any event, a couple of whiskey shots followed by a nice glass of Frangelico shots seemed to do the trick for me. In fact, I'm writing this post while still slightly buzzed. Wheeee!!!

I'm glad this started on a weekend. Who knows if I'll be able to actually pull this off for 30 days straight, but we'll see. Right now, I'm stoked.

A win!

So this happened. I wrote a guest post for Writers Digest!

http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/how-the-2015-october-platform-challenge-changed-my-platform

Submitting the Heck Out of 2016

Yeah, so I just submitted two stories for publication today. "Meanwhile, at the End of the World..." is the story that didn't win the Writers Digest Popular Fiction Awards. I sent that to Tor.com, continuing to aim high instead of wallowing in my self-pity. "Save Often" is the story I wrote after my Christmas story crashed and burned thanks to technology. I sent that to Daily Science Fiction.

Can't wait to get those rejection notices! Keep your fingers crossed!

Happy New Year

How I'm Using the Snowflake Method for my Christmas Story

The Problem

I'm writing a story. I've put in a few hours already, and I'm up to about 2500 words, but I'm still in the beginning. This is a problem because I'm used to writing very short stories and I still have a lot more story to go. This overwhelmed me.

I was overwhelmed.

What's Different

When I wrote those stories before, I knew ahead of time that I was going to keep them short. Sometimes I had a specific word count target, sometimes I had a general word count target, sometimes I just had a distinct understanding of how long it should take the story to be told. This time, however, I don't have any of that. I'm writing a parody of stories like Divergent and The Hunger Games, so I've got a clear understanding of the big events and tropes of the story. I'm also refraining from limiting the size of the story. I'm going to let it be whatever it needs to be. 

A side effect of this is, compared to my more recent projects, I'm doing a lot of writing but not getting very far. I was quite aware that this is to be expected, but I still felt like I was drowning.

It was like I was drowning in too much story.

The Snowflake Method

While doing the Writers Digest Platform Challenge in October, I ran across the article, "The Snowflake Method For Designing A Novel" by Randy Ingermanson, Ph.D. This article described an iterative approach to writing a novel. You begin with a single sentence describing what the story is about, then a paragraph fleshing out those ideas, then several paragraphs describing your characters, and eventually adding more and more levels of complexity until you end up with a novel. From a graphical perspective, Ingermanson describes the single-sentence step as a triangle, while the final product has become exponentially more complex at each side, resulting in a snowflake design.

Ingermanson's Snowflake Illustration

When I saw this the first time, I suspected this might be helpful for me since I have a bad habit of starting really cool writing projects, only to abandon them out of a sense of fatigue when the logistics of tracking details become too much for me to handle.

Where I Am Now

In one sitting, I went through the first two steps of the Snowflake Method--the one-sentence summary and the one-paragraph summary--and got knee deep into the third step, which fleshes out characters in detail by giving them their own one-sentence summary, motivations, goals, challenges, epiphanies, and ultimately a one-paragraph summary.

Before I started using the method, I had a clear understanding of what my story was going to do, but not much of an understanding of why. Now, I know the major players much better. I understand where the story is going next and why it feels like the beginning is taking so long to write (this is ok, it's not going to be a Very Short Story). Best yet, I have a much better understanding of how I'm going to tackle most of the big chunks of the story.

I'm looking forward to investigating the subsequent steps of the Snowflake Method. From what I can tell, it's really going to help me stay focused and not get lost in the details. This story might not be a novel in the end, but the principals behind this method still apply.

Then there's the fact that the story is a Christmas story. And I'm using the Snowflake Method to write it. Snow's usually associated with Christmas. Cuz it's Winter'n'stuff. And that's funny.

The Place Where I Like To Write

Short Story Marathon Training

I have a few friends that, for some ungodly reason, enjoy running. On purpose. Over and over again. When nothing's chasing them! Some even run marathons. I don't understand this.

I am not a runner. I am a writer. I write stuff. I read stuff about writing stuff. While reading stuff about writing stuff a few days ago, I ran across the Story A Day concept at http://storyaday.org/about/. Like NaNoWriMo (http://nanowrimo.org/), Story A Day is a monthlong writing challenge. The difference is that instead of writing a 50,000 word novel during the month of November, the Story A Day challenge is to write a new story each day during the month of May. 

Since it seems my "thing" right now is short stories (see my book in Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00M8QQW9C?ie=UTF8&redirectFromSS=1&pc_redir=T1&noEncodingTag=1&fp=1), Story A Day is a marathon I can understand.

I'm thinking about trying it.

Of course, just like I hear is necessary for a real marathon, one should train for these things. I think I'll try a day or two over the next few weeks to write and finish a story or two. After that, maybe a long Story A Day weekend. Maybe after I do that a couple of times I might be able to take a crack at May.

The good news is that even if I don't finish a story every day, this challenge has the potential to start several stories. From there I can polish a plethora of work after the challenge. I see this as a great opportunity to plant the seeds for several stories. I like this idea very much.

I still don't understand why my friends  run.