A Short Story a Day

202 stories and not quite a year since it started, the A Short Story a Day project is now ended.

The “writer’s blog” portion of ASSAD will continue at my new blog:

Guns & Magic is now my primary blog about writing. I expect I will be posting stories there, as well as notes about my progress as a writer and articles about writing in general. Please feel free to drop by.

My first major post on Guns & Magic is a post mortem of A Short Story a Day:

I will leave ASSAD, with all stories and other articles, online. As a resource–and as a time killer for the curious.

At least for now. Should any of the stories get published elsewhere, I’ll probably have to remove them. But I’ll worry about that when it happens.

I want to thank all my readers, and especially my wife, Susan, for their invaluable feedback and critiques throughout the year. I’ve learned a lot from writing a short story a day, but I wouldn’t have learned as much without you.

It’s been fun!

-David

PS I’m disabling comments on ASSAD as of tonight. So if you want to drop me a note, you’ll need to go over to Guns & Magic. Hope to see you there!

These are the stories I think represent the best of A Short Story A Day:

The following stories might not be the best I wrote this year, but they’re among my favorites. I enjoyed writing them, and I still enjoy reading them (flaws and all). I’m thinking I’ll have to polish some of them up in 2007, get them submission ready, maybe.

And, of course, I enjoyed writing both Incomplete Strangers and The Summoning Fire. Together, those  two novel-of-stories account for 43 stories.

Merry Christmas-Just-Past and Happy New Year!

-David

Over the years, I’ve read about people using tarot cards as writing aids. I’ve always wanted to give it a shot. The archetypal and iconographic imagery seemed like they could be really useful. But a) I didn’t have a tarot deck, b) most available tarot software wasn’t that good [*] and had chintzy public domain artwork, and c) I always felt silly just looking at the tarot decks at the book store, much less picking one out and buying a deck.

Last week, though, I overcame the silly feelings and used some birthday money to buy my first tarot deck. It’s very pretty.

Since then, I’ve been reading about the tarot, soaking up the meanings of the cards and reading about the history of the cards, both for playing games and for divination. Three cheers for the World Wide Web–and the local public library!

Starting on Wednesday of last week, and continuing through today, my stories have had their seeds in tarot spreads. “Fresh Air” and “Nail by Nail” started out with very simple 3-card spreads, basically just past-present-future readings.

Friday’s “Afternoon Gloom” came out of a 7-card spread that I found here. The seven cards in the spread are:

1) Hero

2) Teacher

3) Bad Guy

4) Mission

5) Problem

6) Help

7) Reward

If you’re keeping score, the “bad guy” in “Afternoon Gloom” is Becky’s own frustration. I’ve noticed that I have fewer actual “antagonists” in my stories. I tend to let people beat themselves up.

Over the weekend, I tinkered around, and created my own story spread. It requires nine cards:

Protagonist/POV

1) Past

2) Present (Situation)

3) Goal

Antagonist/Conflict

4) Past

5) Present

6) Goal

Plot

7) Help

Reversal

9) Resolution

I used that one today, for “Victor Comes Home”. It seems to work. I expect, though, that I will be tinkering with the spread some more.

Overall, fun stuff.

The four stories, though, only “sorta” match the readings created from the cards. That is, if you squint and keep an open mind, you might be able to see how I got from the cards to the final stories. I can’t provide any examples, though. Because I have (rather intentionally) kept no records of the initial cards, nor of the readings made from the card, once I finish the story. Just doesn’t seem that useful to keep track of.

So, yah, it’s been fun. But I haven’t totally abdicated my creativity to the cards.

If anyone else has used tarot cards for story idea/structure generation, I’d love to hear how you did it.

-David

[*] This has changed. Check out Orphalese Tarot. It’s a bit quirky, but once you get used to the interface, it’s actually pretty snazzy. Thing is … I like to roll my own dice, and I want to shuffle and deal my own cards.

Today’s story, “Nail by Nail”, is the 200th story posted on A Short Story a Day.

That’s 200 stories in 310 days. Not exactly one per day. More like 2/3’s of a story per day. Close enough, maybe?

-David

The idea of a “writers group” has always appealed to me. The reality, though, of most writers groups has never clicked with me. Writing exercises, readings, critiques … well …

First off, I don’t give a shit about writing exercises. I write at home, on my laptop, with some water/tea/Pepsi handy. Alone (except for my daughter sometimes playing Web games on the old computer behind me). I don’t need (or want) someone else’s muse to make up topics/words/situations/whatever for me to write about. I’ve got it covered, thank you.

Readings are alright, I guess. I can survive them. If they’re short. Like…maybe 5-10 minutes. Tops.

I’ve never sat through a group critiquing anything I wrote. Or critiquing anything anyone else wrote, for that matter. Lucky me, it seems. Because it’s never sounded like a fun thing to do.

A snob, you say? Probably.

So, enough of what I don’t want in a writers group. Let’s focus on the positive for a bit. What, or more to the point, who do I want in a writers group?

An informed audience. That is, people who know (more or less) as much about writing as I do. And all of us looking to improve–though maybe not during the actual meetings.

Commiseration. Again, people who know what I’m talking about. But this time in terms of shared experience, shared paid, shared joy. Because they are doing the same thing I am: writing. Not necessarily full time (I’m not a full time writer), but regularly. I won’t have to ask, “Have you written anything recently?” I’ll know they have. So I’ll ask, “Whatcha been working on?”

Accountability. These people consider themselves writers, and if you want to be one of them you had better be writing. No “want to write”. No “someday I’ll write”. And a very limited tolerance for writers block and “suffering artist” syndrome. And not just writing: actively seeking publication in some form or the other.

Give me those three things, I think, and I’ll be happy. Even if we just meet up once or twice a month and talk about anything but writing, I’d be happy. Because even if we didn’t talk about writing, there would still be those three aspects of the group: an informed audience, commiseration, and accountability.

I’m not saying such a group doesn’t already exist in my area. But this isn’t the kind of group that advertises or spends any time seeking out new members. If I run into one, cool. But I expect I’ll have to create such a group from scratch.

Another “writing goal” for 2007, I suppose.

I’ve never been much of a joiner, but I do like to hang out with people I know and respect and talk about subjects of mutual interest. I may be a solitary writer type person, but I’m still (mostly) social.

-David

The first time, it’s a happy accident. A serendipitous “A ha!“

The second time might not be even recognizable as the second time.

The third time you do it on purpose.

The fourth time … well … even if it sneaks up on you have to admit you were waiting for it, even as you kept busy with something else and/or some other approach.

And when you get to the fifth time … Just learn to live with it.

Too vague?

It seems–and I’m not sure this will be a surprise to anyone–that I like structure. I rebel against structure and organization in so many ways. But if I want to get anything done, I have to approach the task in an organized way.

And, I guess, in a nod to “Full Disclosure”, I must admit that even when I’m chaotic and anarchic, I tend to be so in a systematic, consistent way. *sigh*

Anyway, here’s how I plotted my first (still unpublished) novel: I decided I would borrow the structure of another novel. Two other novels, actually, but one at a “lower level” than the other. If that makes any sense. In other words: one novel provided a template for the plot (lower level), the other one provided a template for the context (higher level).

I wasn’t trying to copy either one, but that hybrid/bastard gave me a place to start. I could summarize, using those other stories as guides, my own story very succinctly. I could see the structure, and then see how my own novel would progress from beginning to end.

The book isn’t published (and might be on the verge of a total re-design and re-write, all of which is beside the point)–but the book is finished. Written to completion. My first completed novel. An important milestone (for me). And I was able to get the novel finished because I could (finally) envision the entire story arc (albeit with training wheels). I knew where I was going, and I wandered from plot point to plot point until I got there. An amazing learning experience, even if it was stretched out over nearly 2 years.

Regardless, I had found a structure. And it worked.

The second novel I plotted evolved out of an extended bit of personal journaling. I had finished writing the first novel, and was pondering the future. After much verbiage, I decided to write a “post modern” novel. I don’t know how “post modern” the final result will be, but once I had a visual image of the structure for the novel, the full outline of the novel began to emerge. I haven’t written this one yet. I’m expecting, though, that I’ll get to it next year (maybe for NaNoWriMo 2007).

The third novel I plotted started out from a single word. What I thought would be the title of my NaNoWriMo 2006 novel. I was wrong. But that word suggested a structure, which became another visual image: a spiral. I tinkered with the spiral image until I had a workable story structure, with separate stories spiraling out from the center.

I just finished the first draft of this one: The Summoning Fire. Since I knew I would be writing the novel as a series of interrelated stories, I figured the structure would keep the sequence of stories from being too obvious, too “chapter-like”. Maybe the spiral structure worked, maybe it needs to be tweaked some more (it’ll probably be tweaked some more), but either way it gave me a starting place, a superstructure to build a complex story on.

In both cases, lots of flailing about, until I had a … oh … what’s that word again …

The fourth novel I plotted was Incomplete Strangers. There wasn’t so much of a visual aspect to this plot, just 3 converging storylines (Blue, the Traveler, and the Tyrant), but it was the first time I deliberately created a structure “out of thin air”. In fact, I created the structure before I even had an idea for a story to hang on it. The structure required certain elements to work (3 main characters, 3 world views, all coming together to a final conflict/resolution), and considering/journaling about the structure brought to mind ideas that would fit.

And then there’s today. I sat down to kick around ideas for a novel. I started out with one idea. That triggered another. And then I had this visual image. Of a structure. And I began to see how the story could fit that structure. Or a different story. So, now my fifth novel plot is under construction. It might be the re-design and re-write of my first novel that I mentioned before (which is not, BTW, the idea I first sat down to kick around). Or it might be something completely different.

Either way, I have a structure.

So, yah, I like structure.

But if you read between the lines, you can see another superstition and/or work habit emerging: A willingness to start somewhere, anywhere, to just get in the car (or The Journal) and go. And accept that where I thought I was going when I took off is not where I’m likely to end up.

In other words, an acceptance of chaos and uncertainty.

There’s also this odd need to see something, which is unusual (I think) in someone as verbally oriented as myself. But a) I’ve always worked better when I have examples to look at; and b) that’s not what we’re talking about here.

What we are talking about is my growing habit/superstition of structuring stories and then writing stories that (mostly) fit that structure.

Or that’s what we were talking about. Because I’m done now.

Almost. One last word: I very much believe that everyone has to find their own writing process that works for them. But maybe my ramblings here about my emerging process will prove helpful to someone else. I hope so.

Have fun!

-David

My first post mortem focused on the novel I wrote in November for NaNoWriMo. This post mortem will look at my experience with NaNoWriMo, overall.

1. I like NaNoWriMo’s mission. Ever since I first heard of NaNoWriMo several years ago, I’ve been an enthusiastic fan. Too many people suffer from “someday syndrome” when it comes to writing. NaNoWriMo strives to make it easy for those people to move “someday” to “today” (or at least “this month”), with a writing goal (50,000 words in a month) that is at once significant and yet still do-able–and over 12,000 people did it this year (including me ).

2. I like the NaNoWriMo forums/community. As a rule, NaNoWriMo participants are energetic, motivated and friendly–especially in the month before November. There are dozens and dozens of forums, based on genre, location, and even general attitude. 70,000+ people from all over the world, all poised to write and talk about writing and support each other through a long, grueling month. What could be cooler?

3. I liked the synergy-energy. Writing is, for me, largely a solitary activity. Sure, I work at home so the wife and kids are knocking about, making noise, asking random questions, and generally being distracting. But the act of writing is just me. With NaNoWriMo, though, you know you’re not alone. There are thousands of other people out there banging away on keyboards, sweating the details and the descriptions and hoping they can hit the word count for today–and maybe even finish early.

There is no real competition in a “contest” like NaNoWriMo, but … well … sure there is. Still, no matter how fast you write, there’s almost always someone writing faster–and longer. And no matter how slow you write, there’s probably someone looking at your numbers with envy and wishing they could produce at your rate. All in all, NaNoWriMo was just a good experience.

I don’t really want to say I “didn’t like” something. So “found questionable” will have to do. Besides, this is all my personal opinion. Hardly gospel.

1. There is too much emphasis on the “50,000″ number. Except for a few instances, like young adult fiction (and not always there; look at those doorstops Rowling’s been writing lately), 50,000 words is a very short novel. For many modern genre’s, 50,000 words is the first half or first third of the text. So, just reaching 50K words–while notable and commendable–doesn’t mean a lot. I came in at 61K words, and I figure I will have to add at least 15K more words just to be salable, and maybe 30K more would be a better target.

2. There is too much emphasis on raw word count. When you start finding “tips and tricks” like “don’t (do not) use contractions”, “always use every character’s full name”, “quote passages of text that the characters read”, “talk to your characters in the body of the text and ask them what the hell they’re doing and why” … well … maybe the intent of NaNoWriMo has been somewhat subverted. I agree with the premise of “just get the words down, edit later”. But I don’t think it’s useful to generate words that you know you’re going to cut later.

3. There is a lot of bad advice and criticism on the forums. I guess that’s to be expected when a large number of enthusiastic amateurs get together. And when the quest for quantity of words trumps anything else. Good advice is given too, of course, sometimes great advice. But it’s often lost in the deluge of posts (70,000 people generate a lot of posts)–and if you didn’t know the good advice beforehand, you’d likely have a hard time spotting it.

4. Finally, there is too much emphasis on November. Perhaps because of #2, people turn their lives upside down and do the equivalent of “binge writing”. Sure, they hit 50K words, and maybe they get to the end of their novel, but they haven’t created a habit of writing. “Real life”, ignored for 30 days, demands attention, and no further writing happens until the next November. I’m somewhat guilty of this. I’ve already admitted that I got damned little else done in November. But I already had a sustainable, near-daily habit of writing, and I’m reverting back to that. If people want to become better writers, they need to do it more than once a year. The rush to the finish of NaNoWriMo doesn’t encourage the more useful, steady approach.

All of that said … I Really Liked writing as a part of National Novel Writing Month.

Even though I find myself wondering how good a 50,000 word story written in less than 24 hours can really be …

Even though I see no point in writing a novel that you have no intention of trying to publish …

Even though I think fan fiction is, at best, harmless …

Even though I consider asking random strangers on a Web forum for advice about plotting, structure, characterization or other crucial story matters  neither useful nor a particularly good idea …

Even though I admit I am a bit of a snob …

I think everyone who participated, whether they hit 50,000 words or not–so long as they wrote something–is to be commended and congratulated.

Because, as anyone who knows me will be sure to attest to: It’s not like I know everything. Or even know that much.

And, yah, I’ll probably do it again next year.

-David

On 1 November, I wrote the first story of The Summoning Fire, “Into the Fire”. And today, 28 November, I wrote the last, “Full Circle”.

# of stories: 23

# of words: 61,500

That comes to an average word count per story of 2670. Which nicely exceeds my original goal (2000 words per story), and even my revised target (2500). The shortest story, “Happy Stories”, is just over 1400 words. The longest, “Into the Defilum”, weighs in with a healthy 4150 words.

1. I finished it! My second novel-length work of 2006. Granted, Incomplete Strangers is significantly shorter than The Summoning Fire, but it still qualifies. I’m thinking I should set a goal of 2 novels per year every year.

2. I wrote over 60K words in a single month. A new personal record. I exceeded my targets for words per story. By a nice margin, as I mentioned above. And (currently) I can see more places to add text, rather than take it out. Which means that I have a good chance of expanding the word count to a more salable length (I’m thinking 90K words isn’t out of the question). Plus, I didn’t resort to any of the rather bizarre and (to my mind) counterproductive “Nano tricks” to pad out the body of the text.

3. I broadened my fictive horizons. I don’t think anything I wrote this month breaks new ground (or sets new lows) for bad taste, the horrible things people do to each other, and so on. But it was all very new to me. I’ve written about lots and lots of different things and viewpoints throughout the ASSAD project. But I hadn’t delved so deeply, I think. An advantage of novel-length stories, of course, because you can focus on one thing longer. Still … sometimes … ick. Also, I think I improved on my ability to describe the setting. I still have room for improvement, but I think I did a much better job this time. On the “experimental” front, I think I learned a lot writing the Summoned’s stories. The non-human POV proved an interesting challenge.

4. It doesn’t suck! Yah, I said this about Incomplete Strangers too, but I think it’s accurate. I have no illusions about it being publishable as it is now, but I’m looking forward to what the book becomes in editing (planned for February).

5. The outline stayed … on target? … for nearly the entire process. Unlike Incomplete Strangers, which outline became … largely metaphorical? … pretty early on, the outline for The Summoning Fire still mostly matches the completed manuscript. True, there were a couple stories cut (because they became redundant), and the last 4 stories–especially “The Hope of Friendship” and “Happy Stories”–are loose (very loose) interpretations of their particular outline summaries. But, yah, the outline worked. Mostly because, I think, after what happened to Incomplete Strangers, I went through the outline over and over, envisioning the stories and making sure what I had outlined had a good chance of becoming what I wrote.

1. The outline changed towards the end. Not in a bad way, but in a significant way, as I described earlier. Twice, I had to go back to stories already written and … adjust … them to fit what reality had morphed into in the meantime. In one place, a time of day. In another, a gender.

2. I added the character of Dancer pretty late in the game, and that needs to be “rippled back” through a handful of stories. I’m not sure how I missed Dancer during the month or so I spent outlining this novel. Probably related to that whole “best laid plans” thing. Still, having done this novel thing twice in the past 3 months, I can see how I made the same mistake in Incomplete Strangers. I need to flesh out the secondary characters more before I start writing.

3. I got damn little else done this month. The average time per story was over 3 hours, I think, and probably closer to 3.5 hours. Part of the reason for this, I think, is that I was trying to get a full, complete story done each day. That brings extra demands that might not have been present had I just been writing 2K words per day based on an outline of chapters. That is, if I had outlined in chapters, instead of stories, I wouldn’t have felt compelled to write a full chapter each day. I would just hit the daily word count, maybe exceed it some for that feel-good feeling, and then call it a day. Sounds good, anyway. I’ll try it out next year. Anyway, my hat is off to anyone who participates in NaNoWriMo while also holding down a full time job.

4. Dark dark dark. I really didn’t expect the story to get as dark as it did. Or rather, I expected the darkness to be more flippant than it turned out. And easier to write. My earlier stories about Reese and Sam (may she rest in peace) had been quite easy to write. They didn’t exactly “write themselves”, but I was able to get into Reese’s voice quickly, point her in a direction, and let her go. When exploring the less … fun? … parts of Hell on Earth, though, I didn’t have such a friendly (in a manner of speaking) guide.

5. The Old Man died. And so did Sam. Of course, I knew that going in. I planned for them to die. I can see myself writing other Reese stories. But without her supporting cast, I’m not sure it would work. I might have to do “prequels” or just have to wait until I can come up with other characters for her to interact with and/or fall in love with. Probably won’t happen soon, though. And, speaking of Sam, I think her character needed more fleshing out. She was getting more defined by the end of the novel, but I can’t help but wish I had known more about her sooner.

Last night I kept thinking, “It ends tomorrow.” And I was … melancholy. As hard as it’s been to write sometimes, I found myself reluctant to end it.

Overall, I’m pleased with how The Summoning Fire turned out. And I look forward to hammering on it next year in preparation of hooking an agent, or a publisher, or maybe both. Here’s hoping.

Thanks for reading!

-David

Yay, me.

-David

A week ago I asked my wife for “an unusual name” for a bit part character. She suggested “Vance”. I morphed that to “Dancer”, used it twice, and went about my life.

Today, I realized that Dancer was a woman. (I should get my contact prescription checked, I guess.) With purple–violet–eyes (natural) and hair (heh). And not just a woman–she and Reese had history. Pre-Sam history. And she further advanced her role into a rather more significant story figure. Almost a plot point.

I’ve had to make notes about all the stories I’m going to have to go back to in the second draft and weave her in so that her appearance isn’t so sudden here at the end. And I already updated the pronouns referring to her (instead of him) in “The Backstabber”, written when she was still barely a footnote.

Novel writing in action, folks. It’s hardly a spectator sport, but sometimes it can surprise you. Or me. Or him-her.

-David