Finally got around to some wordage tonight. Nothing dramatic, but an important five hundred words nevertheless - as they're the opening scene of a new short piece. Tentative title Galton's Dreams.



WIP:

Frozen in fearful panic, I could only stare as the intruder swung through the opening in the fractured panes of glass, and stepped crunching onto the shard-littered corridor. She straightened and only then spotted me in the doorway ahead. The figure was a she, that much was clear, and the sharpest edge of the fear ebbed away as I realized the girl was alone. No police squad in sight.

We were both absolutely still, studying each other. It was difficult to make out her features; she wore a dark training suit and the moonlight slashing through the broken window was the only illumination. It leeched all the color from her face, and the sharp shadows cast across her narrow face gave her a ghostly aspect. Then she turned her head a little and the shadows shifted favorably - No, it could not be.

There. I was strong and resisted the lure of Fallout 3 last night, and instead I finished off a short short story that I am provisionally calling The Snow Fell Fast and Final. It weighs in at almost 3,000 words and I think it will be just over that after an editing pass this weekend.

This is really quite an achievement for me, or so it feels, at least. I wrote this short in two sessions on consecutive nights. That's about 1,500 words per night.

Which is exactly the type of productivity level I want to aim for. Wordage is important, that's what reading lots of author blogs over the past few months has taught me (reaching a Jay Lake-like level of superhuman hypergraphy might be out of the question, but there seems to be a consensus that when you're drafting, you should just sit down and write, no matter how you're feeling or what the distractions of the day might have been).

Anyway. I'm feeling quite happy with myself!

Story: The Singer Unsung (working title)

Word count: 300

Total word count: 1690

Reason for stopping: still not sure of where to take the plot. I know the boy is going to lose his friend, the only question is how and when.

To come back to writing process, I find that listening to some mood-setting music on my good pair of headphones is about the only way to get over my innate fear of failure, my automatic self-censoring mechanism that refrains me from writing freely. I'll try and use that to write sooner in the evening, which should give me some more time and allow me to go beyond a few hundred words per day. Should being the key word here. Oh well.

Title: The Singer Unsung (working title)

Word count: 360

Total word count: 995

Reason for stopping: Tired. 

Only started writing fairly late in the evening. I must work on my "process"... just get to the writing earlier, by shutting out outside distractions.

Listened to Sigur Ros while writing. Worked pretty well for the mood of this piece.

Title: The Singer Unsung (working title)

Word count: 623

Total word count: 623

Reason for stopping: no clue how to continue with the embedded narrative.

I'm happy I got around to writing tonight at all, because I felt a little down after getting the rejection slip from SH. But then I figured, if everyone says you just need to keep going, why not?

Oh. It's going to be fantasy piece, did I mention that? I decided that the only way to find out whether I should be writing science fiction or fantasy would be to try both. So this piece will be my shot at writing fantasy. Wonder which I'll enjoy more, and whether either will get picked up by an editor along the way...

This is day one. The first day of my writing life. It is not the day on which I first wrote fiction; not at all. That started months ago. However, I have been reading quite a few writerly blogs and they have taught me that you become a writer when you get your first rejection slip.

And today is the day. My very first piece of fiction ever (well, since high school at least), a 5,500 word short called Total Immersion got a form rejection from Strange Horizons. Quite predictably, of course. I just saw that Jed, the fiction editor who dealt with my submission read over 60 subs on a Saturday... ouch!

Still, as a newbie I am still full of unrealistic hopes and dreams of how my writing will leap out of the slush pile, how wildly enthusiastic editors will brawl over the right to publish it, and undying fame and glory will be my part.

No such luck today though :-)

For the record, I also submitted a flash piece to Apex Digest for the Halloween competition (I was surprised how difficult it is to tell any kind of story in less than 1,000 words!) and I've just resubmitted Total Immersion, this time to Futurismic.