Writing n’ Stuff

So – this month has been mental. We made the decision to move house only a month ago, when we got a great opportunity to rent a big house with a lovely garden from people we know, and – after a lot of hard work – we’re here, more or less.

This means the writing’s fallen somewhat by the wayside, and – for this, and several other reasons – I’ve decided to stop with the whole Twelve Tales idea.

I’m not stopping writing, though – far from it. I’m determined to make this a thing that I do, one way or another, as I enjoy it and it feels great when I get it done.

Rather than the whole story-a-month idea, I’m using the Magic Spreadsheet method, as popularised by the wonderful Mur Lafferty – albeit a locally hosted version.

It’s a way to encourage myself to write a little each day, whatever that may be. It quickly became clear that writing a story a month corralled me into writing fairly straightforward slice-of-life tales that – while I’m sure any writing coach worth their salt would recommend as a craft-honing exercise – didn’t particularly excite me. I want world building, dammit – big, stupid, strange fantasy vistas – and I see no reason to hold myself back from creating them.

I’m still keeping Katharine’s twelve ideas as a repository of ideas, and have a few others of my own. Not restricting me to a particular story format allows me to go as deep as I want into an idea, and work at a length that emerges to suit the story – rather than something pre-subscribed and potentially ill-fitting.

I’m choosing to see this not as a failure, but as a new direction in my ongoing creative self-development, which is dreadfully wanky but also mostly true. I’m currently experimenting with a far-post-apocalyptic metal fetishist tale. So far, so not great, but it’s a fun exercise and has the seeds of something interesting.

Whatever comes up at the end, I’m enjoying my bite-sized creative writing routine, and when the house stuff calms down I’ll have more time to commit to it.

Twelve Tales – Phantoms

So – here we are at the end of the first of twelve months, in which I’ve pledged to write 12 short stories, charting my progress as I go.

The first one – titled Phantoms – is finished.

It’s – well – not great.

Now, I’m a copy editor by trade, and I’ve been on the other side of this particular table plenty of times. It’s easy to tut, wag your finger and say “Why don’t you let me be that judge of that?” or “Don’t put yourself down.”

In this case, however, I’m comparing it to work I’ve done previously. This story is not up to my usual standard. Even now, at this nascent stage of my writerly development, I’ve done much better before.

But it’s the first of my 12 stories, and it was written and posted on time. That – in itself – is an achievement, as my first aim in this project is to start a writing habit and produce finished work on a regular basis.

I’ve also learned a lot this month – about my current level of ability, the limitations of my time, and the process of writing to a schedule.

The brief I was given for this month was ‘Ancestor’s views of a person working in a phone shop.’ I started with an ambitious idea – that an Aztec scribe and colonialist collaborator who had died of smallpox would find himself awakening in today’s Mexico City on the Day of the Dead.

The implication would be that this is the latter stages of Mictlan (a sort of Aztec Purgatory, if I’m not being too reductive in saying so, where those who died from anything but sacrifice, battle, childbirth or drowning languished) and his task would be to find out what he needed to do to move on from there – in the course of the day. He would meet a young woman – owner of a small phone stall – who would clearly be a descendent of his, and she’d help him find the vindication he needed to move on.

It’d be full of bizarre fever dreams of horrific Meso-American gods and human sacrifice; fascinating interplay between the city old and the city new – both characters in their own right; explorations of imperialism and cultural integration…it was going to be pithy, complex, and – of course – bloody great.

About three weeks into the month, I realised that there was no way I could finish. Just the research required was far beyond the scope of the time I had available (less than I expected to get – work and family life are of paramount importance) – I knew only the most superficial details about Mexico City, Tenochtitlan, the Day of the Dead, Aztec civilisation and the Spanish conquests, and while I was enjoying finding out about these things, it was three quarters of the way through the month and I’d barely scratched the surface – let alone made any headway with weaving the sort of complex strands of character, plot and theme I was hoping for. At my current level of ability, it just wasn’t going to happen.

So – about ten days ago – I shelved the Mexico City ghost story. Sitting on the bus, I banged out an outline for an altogether simpler tale, which I’ve now written, posted and linked to at the top of this post.

I was going for a Twilight-Zone-esque slipstream sort of thing, but ended up with a poorly-defined theme, a passive, unsympathetic, unlikeable protagonist, and a rushed ending.

If I did it again, I think I’d have more fun with it – think of some ‘what if’s about phones and what they can do – pick some interesting power or function and build a story around that plot device.

Still – I did it, and I’m happy with that as an outcome. I’ve got a much better sense now of how much time I can spend writing each day, when I can do it, and where my writing needs work. I also know that I can get stories written and done – even when things go wrong and I need to start again late in the day.

A big part of this project is to map my progress, and this a good place to start improving. Feel free to read, if you like, and any feedback is more than welcome.

All Aboard the Whimsy Wagon

All’s been quiet on the blogging front, and I’ve been plugging away at the first of my twelve short stories – in between work, reading, spending quality time with my little girl and getting the odd bit of sleep.

This month’ll be all about finding my feet, establishing the habit and getting a routine set in place for the monthly churning out of a reasonably cohesive piece of fiction.

So – obviously – I’ve chosen a setting for my first story that requires a shit-ton of research. I won’t give too much away, but essentially it’s a ghost story set in Mexico City. Needless to say, I’ve never been to Mexico, nor have I ever had a reason to know anything but the most superficial facts about it until now.

As hubristic (or just downright silly) as this may be, I’ve found it to be a helpful trial by fire, and have remained fairly motivated throughout the first couple of weeks- whether it’s been research, working on the first draft or just mulling over ideas. Fortunately, I’ve also found that I really enjoy research – I just need to be careful that it doesn’t get in the way of getting a story done within each month.

I’ve also been trying to wing it – rather than writing an outline first – which is a departure for me. I’ve always looked slightly askance at the concept of ‘discovery writing’. The fey, dewy-eyed claims that get bandied around concerning characters which ‘take you away’ and ‘just won’t gosh-darned behave‘ – purportedly leading to beautiful, organically plotted fiction – never quite sat right with me.

That said, whatever helps a writer get words down on the page is fine by me, and I wanted to give discovery writing a chance. So, at the start of the month, I hopped aboard the Whimsy Wagon and joined the ranks of the pantsers.

I’ve been plugging away in a linear fashion, writing what it seemed should come next. But – perhaps inevitably – I just can’t do it. It’s not the way my mind works.

That’s not because I’m a stickler for organisation, though – quite the opposite. My mind can be a messy, chaotic place, and that’s never more apparent than when I’m actively trying to make things up. I tend to think in terms of strong images and work outwards from there, and it often takes time before the overarching themes and coordinating narrative grammar of what I’m brewing up present themselves.

This stuff doesn’t come chronologically, either, and what I’ve found is that I’ll get an idea for something to come later, with no good idea of how I’m going to get there. My memory sucks, so I need to start scribbling it down…and I end up with something that looks a heck of a lot like an outline anyway.

It’s late, and I’m burbling. What I’d take from this, though, is that my difficulties with discovery writing are down to my inexperience as much as anything. Outlines are a handy way to scope out new ideas and learn about forming engaging narratives – particularly for new writers. Most importantly, they come naturally to me, so it seems sensible to stick with them.

Maybe one day the Whimsy Wagon will trundle back around, and I’ll be there, waiting to hitch a ride. Might be fun, but I think I’ve some walking to do first.

Twelve Tales

I’ve always loved short stories, and I want to get good at writing them.

For some time, I’ve been trying to form a lasting creative writing habit outside of work, so I’ve set myself a challenge.

Starting this July, I will write a short story every month for the next year, and put all twelve on a blog. This blog, to be specific.

This is regular, achievable, and should fit in around work and soon-to-be-upped daddy duties without burning me out.

Rather than just writing whatever I feel like, I asked Katharine – my lovely wife – to come up with twelve one-sentence story prompts, and to put them in order for me.

Katharine’s an eclectic reader. Our tastes in fiction diverge as often as they align, and her prompts will help me get outside my comfort zone. It’ll also give me much-needed motivation: I’ll always have an idea, at least one person waiting to see how it turns out.

I’ll be posting as regularly as I can about how I’m doing – probably about other stuff that interests me, too.

Oh – it’s worth noting that I’m a massive fantasy, sci-fi and horror nerd, and there’s an excellent chance that’ll be reflected in my stories. If that’s not your thing, beware: here be dragons. Probably spaceships, and unspeakable tentacled horrors, too.

Still here? Marvellous.

So – I’ll post the first one at the end of July sometime, and we’ll see how this goes.

It lives!

I’m resurrecting this old blog to help me get into a regular writing habit, and this post is just a test to see how things look.