Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Drib
You've gotten me very curious about the story.....
I remember what my writing teacher told my (Prof. Jauss, an O. Henry winner for Best Short Story of the year), when he asked the class how many short stories he thought an author could write in a year. He said an author was lucky if he/she could complete 3 or 4 in that time.. Of course, we're talking 'literary' short stories, not genre fiction.
So, your story should be ready in about, oh.....2 or 3 more hours? ---- Just joking!  |
LOL. Well, I might best be described as She Who Must Have Delayed. ;-)
There's nothing fancy about it, really. I have had this on my (at that point, untitled as such) bucket list for a long time--simply to finish this ONE book. I may never publish it, or submit it to Agents, etc. I started out with one book....quite a while ago. After 62,000 words, I decided I really, really HATED it. And I didn't like the genre. However, bits of it had a mystery that popped up in it, and a character that my critique group LOVED.
So...I nuked 60,000 words of it. Yes, threw them right out. But I kept 1380 very excellent words, and one great character. I decided to form a book with that character, in a different (mystery) genre. It's NOT literary; I have no such lofty goals nor pretensions. Just a plain ol', plain ol' mystery. After allowing it to sit fallow for some years, I've picked it up again, with a simple requirement (given my schedule), of 250 words/night. 90K in a year, to whittle down to 80-ish, I'd guess, during the rewrites.
But, I'm not a spring chicken, and when I first learned writing, back when we had to duck and evade raptors at lunchtime, we spent time on developing other things--themes, sub-plots to display themes around the central theme, creating structure to support the story (actually, as PART of the story), etc. So I tend to create
that way.
And, because I do, the outlining, so I can see everything I'm doing, how I'm moving the plot along; I can see where things might drag in the 2nd Act, or where the end needs fleshing out so it doesn't feel rushed. I can make sure I'm hitting my structure goals (the catalyst at point X, and so on). Ergo, liking something like Plot Structure. (Although: per our other discussion, I am 99% sure that I lost a bit of content from it, yesterday/day before. I'd been working on some in-depth character creation for a very important main plot character, and when I went to work on it some more last night, it was gone. Not cheery about that!).
Outline's now at 17 pages. :-)
So, that's the story, so to speak. Nuthin' fancy. Just determined to finish it.
Hitch