Writer’s block dogged me last weekend like some sort of film noir stalker. It followed along to Monday, and Tuesday was a lost cause, mostly to class. After a fit of fatigue-inspired desparation, I finally managed to start something new on Wednesday.
Well outside of this website, I also maintain a journal. In theory, it’s a collection of musings that lack coherent structure. I do occasionally generate an idea within the journal and then build it up somewhere else as something a little more mature, but in truth the journal is more like a catalog of petty whining and stream-of-conscious complaints. A portal to history in the making it is not.
Lost and increasingly frustrated with my lack of output, I decided that I’d take my routine, journal documented and annotated, and turn it into a story. Yes, I was desparate enough to try to turn a 9-5 tech support job, 3 hour microeconomics class, and errand-filled repetition into a story…
I’m happy to say that’s not the story that I’m half finished with. I admit I started that story, but fifty words in and I was bored with the setting, the characters, and whatever cobbled together plot I had decided on up to that point.
At first I started to make some small tweaks. One by one, each change got a little bit larger. After 200 words I was barely left with my initial idea still intact (no loss). One person became three people. My tech support job somehow became an anonymous poet laureate for a group of bank robbers. A few sentences later and I turned the bank into a bar leaving me with a trio of bar-robbers philosophically opposed to speaking on the phone. With the vault gone I had to pull out a few other motivations for my crew of would be Dillingers to wrastle with (other than their mutual distaste for tech support that is).
Currently, it’s half done and it’s not half bad. (That means when it’s all done, it’ll only be a quarter bad?) Another week at my current sluggardly pace and I’ll have it finished. 2,500 words tops I imagine. I want to keep it short. So far I’m riding a wave of Dickensian wall-breaking that would get old after more than a few pages. Also, I want to have something to submit soon. Once a month. That’s the goal. It’s not I have any especially need to put a story out into the world that quickly, but the world always seems a bit brighter the day after I’ve mailed off my tripe to another unsuspecting editor…
But aren’t short stories a waste of time? I hear that periodically and I’ve never heard of them selling especially well. It’s a tough market, although that’s all the better for learning against yes? If you can write a publishable short story in such a small but vigorously contested market, you’ve proven that you’re up to par on your writing, at least that’s the theory. If not, Neil Gaiman discussed short stories a bit in a recent interview. Verdict: not dead. So there!
Well, I’m starting to antagonize my audiance I imagine that’s as good a reason as any to bring this week’s absurdity to a close. Adieu and Go England! (I’m assuming the USA loses early, but hey, anything can happen right?)
