To my great surprise, I am working on my second story that contains trolls. I have nothing against trolls, I just didn’t plan on writing about any – but here they are nonetheless.
My first troll story came about thanks to an assignment in the week-long fantasy workshop I went to in Oregon last month. We were given a list of potential characters which included trolls, and part of the assignment was to set our story in the town we live in. I live in Boulder, Colorado, and kept being drawn to the idea of writing about trolls because being right by the foothills we have a lot of rocks around town, and part of the traditional Scandinavian mythology is that trolls turn to stone in the sunlight. I ended up modifying that premise for the story I wrote in class, and came up with an even different variation for the story I’m working on right now. Both stories have been very fun to write. And really, who can say for sure that some of the rocks I’ve walked by aren’t really trolls in disguise? 🙂
Jasper and Rosie with ‘A Fistful of Dinosaurs!’ Yes, those are dog noseprints all over our window.In other news, my short story “The Other Side of the Portal” will be available in A Fistful of Dinosaurs this Wednesday! I almost didn’t write this story – I’d never written a dinosaur story before, and when I first found out about the collection I had a hard time coming up with an idea that I liked enough to want to write about. But the idea of writing a dinosaur story was so intriguing that I kept thinking about it, and then one day I figured out the setting – in tunnels underneath present-day London, of course! And from there out it was easy.
It was also really fun to write about the dinosaur itself. I wanted to write about a very intelligent dinosaur, and after doing some research read about Latenivenatrix, which is currently considered to be one of the most intelligent dinosaurs. Not being a paleontologist, I am far from an expert, of course… But it seemed reasonable to go with this particular subfamily/genus. The dinosaur in my story has both feathers and fur, which I obviously can’t prove it had, but I like the idea – and based on the research I did, it seems likely that at least one variety of dinosaur had both. Chuck and Jim, the editors of this anthology, put together a really fun video trailer for A Fistful of Dinosaurs. 🙂
My biggest accomplishment for the past week was breaking my all-time record for the number of mimosas drunk in one day. Hooray! 🙂
I don’t actually know how many mimosas I actually drank, but I had a very fun brunch with six of my girlfriends – one of whom took over the ordering of drinks, and told our waiter to keep bringing beverages and that we’d drink them all. Which we clearly did. 🙂 This meant Saturday was not nearly as productive of a writing day as I’d planned, but I did manage to write 198 words, so there’s that. And the brunch did fit with my new plan to fit in more fun time…
Our baby junipers. They look like they’ve done something naughty.I’ve also been making more time to exercise, and while I have yet to see any physical results from this, I did have one day last week where I went to the gym after work and when I got home I realized I felt much more mentally ready to write. I had been planning on going to the gym in the morning before work, but am now thinking after work might help with my writing. (For the record, I actually do exercise regularly, but apparently I need to level up to fit into a few things that fit just fine a year or two ago…) It’s totally doable to write while you have a day job, but it’s hard to jump right into writing when I get home, so this experience has given me some ideas to try to see if I can make the transition easier – and faster.
I’m also working on revamping my writing/publishing schedule. I’m adding in more fun time (the mimosas obviously fit in that category…), and am taking more breaks so that I can be more refreshed when I’m writing. This also includes more reading, which is super awesome. I used to read multiple books a week, but years ago this dwindled to a mere handful of books a year because I had a string of day jobs that took so much mental energy that I found it hard to fit in reading. I also found that extreme multi-taking at work meant that it was hard for me to focus on reading, and I’d struggle to get through an entire chapter in one day. I’d read a few pages, and even if I enjoyed what I was reading, it was really hard to make myself concentrate on one thing for more than a half hour or so. (If that.)
I’ve been reading Juliet Blackwell’s Witchcraft Mysteries, which are exactly what I need right now – they’re fun, lighthearted, and in addition to the fabulous vintage clothing descriptions, there’s a gargoyle who disguises himself around ‘normal’ people by taking the form of a miniature pig! In addition to having a ridiculously large collection of vintage sewing patterns, I’m also a fan of Esther the Wonder Pig – and I love witch stories. So this series is totally working for me. 🙂
I am an unrepentant Pollyanna, so even when I’m super crazy behind I know that I’ll catch up at the very end, just like back in high school when I’d start writing a paper two days before it was due even though I’d known about the assignment for weeks. Okay, so maybe starting earlier would have been a little less stressful – and just thinking about this is giving me flashbacks to madly printing out some assignment on a dot matrix printer, which is a little disturbing because it’s raising my blood pressure even though I finished high school, um, a while ago. 🙂 But I know I’m very, very lucky because I’m unusually good at keeping calm and working under pressure.
Blossoms on my new crabapple tree! New to me as of late last summer. Isn’t it pretty?!?This is a very fortunate fact, since I once again procrastinated and failed to work on my latest story – which is due pretty much right now. However, since I am me, there is – of course! – a silver lining! A few days ago I realized that the reason I was having a hard time with this story is because it doesn’t fit the anthology I was writing it for. Huzzah! I still love the story, and I will totally finish it at some point (when I don’t have five gajillion looming deadlines…).
One might ask: why did it take me so long to figure this out? I don’t know, although I do know that once I had my epiphany it was ridiculously obvious. A while back I made a checklist of things to remember when I’m stuck on a story. I need to add “does the story fit the collection/series/whatever I’m writing it for?” to the list.
Once I had this (now very obvious) realization, I knew I needed to set aside the original story and come up with something new – but what? It had to fit the theme of the anthology and be something I could write quickly. I turned to The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot. This is a formula that Lester Dent, a prolific and very successful fiction writer during the 1930s-ish pulp years, used. The TL;DR is: assume your story is about 6,000 words long, and break it up into four chunks of 1,500 words each. In each section add suspense, menace, a physical conflict, and a surprise plot twist. Get your hero deeper and deeper into trouble until all appears lost, and then he/she/they save the day.
This was exactly what I needed for my story. Here’s a snippet of the opening – this is from the first draft, so it may change a little before publication.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Lester hated his job.
He liked the work itself – and really, who wouldn’t enjoy spending their days in a laboratory analyzing the properties of different organic materials and experimenting with incorporating them into robots? But the job itself was a different story. His boss, Dr. E. E. Humphreys, was a slave-driver, a micro-manager, and, to make matters worse, he insisted on wearing a cologne of patchouli and spruce that tickled Lester’s nose. It was difficult to look at things in a microscope when you kept having to sneeze.
At least it was a Saturday, so the fragrant doctor wouldn’t be in the office. Lester shouldn’t be either, but he’d left his phone on his desk the day before and was getting behind on Candy Crush.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I made an outline to think through the Lester Dent formula ahead of time, and that was really fun and helpful because I had to think about the different components (the surprise twists, etc.). The story is practically writing itself!
I am still behind where I’d like to be, but figuring out why I was holding myself back on this story undid the logjam, so I should be back on top of everything very soon.
