Falling in Love Again

Or the thrill of the first draft.

I’ve been throwing myself back into WRRW. The poor novel has been languishing on my hard drive for long enough. But I’m here now, and I think my characters are pleased to see me.

If fact my MC has grabbed me by the hand and is dragging me along on her adventure faster than I can type. I can’t blame her. I left her hanging in a bit of a tricky situation and she’s keen to get out of there – only thing is, I’ve got some nasty surprises for her up ahead.

Ah, but I suspect she has a few surprises for me!

That’s the thing about falling in love again – you never quite know what is going to happen. Will it all work out? Will this turn into a permanent relationship? Or am I still in love with my last novel – the one winging its way back to the agent’s in tray as I type.

Will I end up two timing? Maybe I’m a novel bigamist?

But for now I’m happy to go with the flow. I’m keen to know how things work out in this story, and, well, what happens afterwards – I’ll worry about that another day.

'Symbionts' Published Online

My short story 'Symbionts' has just gone up at The Absent Willow Review in their February issue. You can read it here. Do pop over and take a look.

There are some great stories on that site and some lovely artwork to go with them.

Symbionts is my tenth short story publication. It great to see it in print. :-)

Grabbed by the Throat

We drove to the Alps last week to go skiing, and as we drove through the mountains I stared up at their snow clad slopes and dark forests and allowed my thoughts to wander.

And as usual, at times like this, when my mind is empty and I’m not thinking about writing at all, along comes a new idea, sliding into my head from out of nowhere.

And as we drove and the snow started coming down it began to grow.

I’ve been buzzing with it all day, jotting down notes as they occur to me, and it’s growing, developing, taking shape like a piece of unformed clay in a potters hands. At first it was one story, but now I see it could be a series.

And it’s exciting. It’s very exciting.

But I’m not ready to write it just yet. Let it mature a little bit longer, like a good wine.

And anyway, I’m right in the middle of writing WRRW, and that one isn’t about to let me go.

So many stories – so little time to actually sit down and write them!! This one is just going to have to be patient!

When to Stop

Editing that is, not writing in general

But when do you decide to stop tweaking and changing things as sit back and say to yourself ‘enough’s enough, time for this baby to venture out into the big bad world.’?

I seem to have done nothing but edit, and rewrite, and edit and rewrite for the past few months, and I’ve reached the stage where every time I look at it I see a word I want to tweak, or replace with a stronger one, or change the emphasis in some small way.

I could go on like this for ages.

I’ve set it aside, come back to it with fresh eyes and set it aside again.

Have I addressed all the issues the agent raised? Have I done a good enough job? Is this something he can sell? I could stare at it and ask myself these questions for months to come.

No. The time has come. Time to stop tweaking and putting things off. Time to get it back out there.

Maybe this version will be good enough to attract the attention of an agent, maybe not. But there’s only one way to find out.

Rules are to be Broken

One of my regular blog readers e-mailed me a few days ago to point out that he could name a number of short stories that actually made the ‘mistakes’ that I listed in my last post but managed to pull it off. (Thanks Ken – a very valid observation)

Here are the examples he cites:

3) The bad joke – similar to 2 – the only point of the story is the delivery of a [bad] punchline at the end.

“Normally yes, but it can be an effective device occasionally; see "Shah Guido G" by Issac Asimov for a rare example where it is.”

I have to agree that I have also seen this done well. It’s a version of the twist in the tale story and I have a friend who is particularly good at those. However, I think my point is that it has to be skilfully executed. And the joke has to be pretty good too.

1) It’s not a story (beginning, middle and end) – just a scene or setting & 5) No Proper ending.

“As in pretty much anything by the American writer Lorrie Moore IMO.”

I’m not familiar with this writer so I can’t comment. But again, it wouldn’t surprise me.

You see, this was never meant to be a definitive list. All rules can be broken, you just need the skill to do it and an experienced writer could probably pull off pretty much anything. But for the newer writer, still developing their skills, some of these are pitfalls best avoided.

So who else can think of an example where someone has broken one of these ‘rules’ and got away with it? I bet there are loads!

Common Short story Mistakes

I have both written a read a fair number of short stories in my time, and I thought it might be timely – (what with the ongoing flash fiction contests over at Litopia getting more and more people to try their hand at this form) – to summarise some of the more common mistakes people make when writing short stories.

1. It’s not a story – often just a scene or setting
2. The bolt from the blue – the twist ending that comes from nowhere – a twist in the tale can be good, but not if it’s just been tagged on for effect
3. The bad joke – similar to 2 – the only point of the story is the delivery of a [bad] punchline at the end.
4. The summary of a story – almost like a mini novel or a synopsis
5. No proper ending – endings are hard – they need to resonate and have strength and purpose. So often stories seem to just fizzle out. Sometimes this can be something as simple as not ending in the right place.
6. And then he woke up – I really hate these – it’s a case of ‘drat, how do I get my characters out of this situation – oh I know…’
7. It’s a cliché – I won’t list cliché’s here – it’s been done elsewhere and so much better – here’s one such link.

http://www.strangehorizons.com/guidelines/fiction-common.shtml

Of course, just getting these things right doesn’t automatically mean that you’ve written a good story – there’s far more to it than that. The short story has so much to squeeze into a small space; believable characters, a satisfying plot with a good resolution, but also, more subtly, the really good ones manage to work on many different levels.

And that, of course, is where the real skill lies.

Anyway Sally Zigmund is running a series of excellent articles on short stories over at The elephant in the writing room – I suggest you go and check them out!

Easterlies

There’s a bit of an easterly swell coming in today. Fresh and ever so cold. A good day for walking along the beach and trying to untangle all the conflicting advice I’m getting at the moment about the novel I’ve been rewriting.