Five Days Five Stories

Going back over the years of posts here, I realize many of them read like I’m going to confessional: “Father, it has been 3 months since I last wrote in my online journal.” Well, I think what I’ll do is make these posts private, or password protected or something, and start making ones actually intended to be read by people, because, I have good news! Well not that good of news. I haven’t been published yet, but I am writing a lot, and wanted to check in quickly about the week I took of work just now. I was planning on doing NaNoWriMo, as I do every year, and wanted to ensure I was set up for success. I was going to do a story idea I’ve been mulling over for a while now called Is Ought, but wasn’t sure what would come of it, and I had to have all my PTO for work submitted by mid October, so I took the last week of November off.I figured either I was on track, was off track, or was wildly off course, in the wilderness somewhere and would need most desperately of all to at least feel like I had time to write something. So I allotted myself that time not yet knowing how I would actually use it. I started off doing the Is Ought story, and was doing pretty well. I was at pace up until Dylan and I left for Thanksgiving, the story sat at about 24k words, but a week went by without any writing going on, and I started to look at the story with a lack of enthusiasm, it wasn’t shaping out the way I wanted it to. At the same time, I had started reading George Saunders’ book a Swim in a Pond in the Rain, and was realizing I should really take a hard look at short stories as an art form if I am, well… trying to get one published. So I started studying. I reached out to a writing coach, Bruce McAllister, and have been emailing with him, being held accountable to the kinds of craftwork studying I want to do. One such instance in which that is helpful to me is that, on citing my influences and “potential shelf-mates” Bruce told me that most all of my picks were “Modern, but not contemporary.” As a result, I started reading a few contemporary short story collections. As recommended by Bruce, I picked up the newest edition of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy which has been extremely helpful, as well as Ottessa Moshfegh’s Homesick for Another World and George Saunders’ Tenth of December. Another Thing Bruce asked me to do was to choose an author whom I wanted to learn “craft” from, and to transcribe passages, particularly the opening pages to short stories, into a text editor. Funnily enough, this is something I had done before, as reference to a vague memory of a Tobias Wolff novel I had read in high school, and in fact, my first novel draft, Time Demands an End is really just a crude retelling, or reimagining of Murakami’s story A Wild Sheepchase, which I tried to copy the story beats for almost to the letter, just to prove to myself that I could write 50k words, at least from a mechanical perspective. A few days of my studies went by, I was taking notes furiously, and my week of dedicated writing time was approaching. It became clear to me that I would not be returning to my work on Is Ought and that I instead wanted to try to write short stories, ones that were in the three to six thousand word range which were the lengths that made it into the best American anthology. Then I had the (ambitious, narcissistic) idea to do one each day. My reasoning for this was simply that I didn’t want to dwell on anything too long, and be stopped in my tracks. By focusing on one story each day my hope was that I’d be able to leave the drafts where they were at around five or six in the evening, and not think about them again until the week was over. I wasn’t actually sure I would be able to get five stories out in a week, so I also gave myself, in my preparatory journaling, freedom to call the day quits at the outline stage——if I managed to get a 4 page summary (via the snowflake method) done, then I could move on, guilt-free. Well, the week is over, and I have five stories. Three of which are done, as in, rough draft ready for editing. Two are rather good, and one is really good. I read it over several times and sent it to just about everyone I could think to send it to. (though I only got two people to actually read it) The word count came out to around 20k, meaning that overall, with the half-baked Is Ought draft, I nearly managed the NaNoWriMo goal of 50k words, even with a full week of no writing being done. I think If I counted the outlining of Is Ought as well as the journaling I did over the month, I would easily have passed that mark, so I am going to mark this year as a successful finish, my second ever! I’m not sure where I will end up going with these stories now that I have them in draft form, but I sent two of them to my coach, and will, if he likes them, be editing them and potentially preparing them to send to magazines, along with Every Circle a Point. Things are actually going well, and I am writing, just as I had a gut feeling I would. Maybe The intentions I set for the Aphelion of my life will all come out after all.