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capri0mni(or nearly every day, at any rate)
Is that as soon as you finish one story, you have to think up ideas for the next one.
That's one reason I made this resolution: to keep my mind limber...
But all this thinking has got me thinking... of all the story ideas I've had in the past, and which I could recycle ;-).
And there is a story I wrote -- a full length children's novel, as a matter of fact, that almost went down the road to being published.
It started when I was in college, as a series of dreams I had, with recurring characters, about a wizard and his big white shaggy dog, and a band of children of all nationalities, and in each dream in which they appeared, they had to "find the lost spell" that would help someone in need (the specific problem and the locale of each dream was different, but the wizard was always the same, and he was always accompanied by an annonymous band of culturely diverse, boistrious kids).
Anyway, the summer just before my senior year of college, I decided to write the basic idea of the dream into a "short" story. It didn't take long for me to realize it wasn't short at all, so, going into my senior year, I created my own one credit course around writing it, and finished it up as a novel (the finished product, btw, had very little in common with my series of dreams, except that it was about "trying to find the lost spell"). My professor suggested I try to get it published. So I did... I did try -- but maybe not as persistantly as I should have.
Anyway, after I left college, I didn't do much with my life really, and that was driving my mother up the wall, so I decided to go on and get my master's degree in creative writing. (This was 12 years ago -- the first Gulf War was going on then, and I wasn't happy about it, then, either). All through this time, I was tentively looking for an agent for my book, and not finding one.... And my mother's breast cancer was matasicizing, and I knew she was on the road to death. Then, a writer friend and mentor of mine suggested that I send the manuscript to her agent. And so I did. And I began to have the idea that maybe, just maybe, I could sign a publishing contract before my mother died, and wouldn't that be a nice gift for her -- to let her know that I would at least get some money in royalties and get my name into the wider world before she left me, and I was planning on making the dedication to her in the front.
Except. Months went by, and I never heard back from the agent. Finally, I plucked up the courage to call her, and she said: no, she wouldn't take it on, because, although it was good, it wasn't good enough -- the "voices" of the two main characters were too much alike. If I had been at any other point on my path, I would have taken this criticism in stride, and gone back to see what I could do to correct the problem. As it was, I was devestated.
Now, my mother had made me all but promise to assume she'd get well, and not tell anyone she was sick while I was at school. But after I got off the phone with the agent, my face must have showed the ultimate defeat I was feeling, because my friends asked me what was wrong, and I told them about my mother's cancer for the first time.
She died two weeks later.
According to the school's policy, l could have taken a year off for bereavement time, and not lose any credits toward my degree. I decided against this option, however.
Going home would have meant going back to isolation (our nearest neighbors were 1/4 mile away, down a rough, steep dirt road), leaving the community I had become a part of, when I needed community support most of all, and going back to a house that wasn't nearly as barrier-free as the college campus, and that meant I would have been dependant on Dad at a time when he was grieving, too. But the truth was, I couldn't really do the work anymore, while in grief, and I just coasted along. I passed all my course work, and completed all the requirements for the degree, though -- except for one thing. I missed a little 3 X5" slip of paper I was supposed to file by a certain deadline. Because I missed that deadline, I had to sign up for an extra credit, to complete over the summer while at home.
Well, after I got home, the grief really hit, and I just couldn't do the work. I got an "F" on that extra credit (which I wouldn't have needed at all, if I'd caught that slip of paper in time), and that brought my whole grade point average down, so I no longer qualified for the degree. Acquaintances have asked why I didn't appeal for it, but at the time, the idea of going through all that paperwork and red tape was as appealing as the idea of getting shot in both kneecaps with a 9 millimeter... I did the work, I honed my craft, I learned about myself as a person, and I became a stronger, better writer. That's what I went in there, for, anyway.
Long story short: while the book was good enough to go down the path toward publication, it wasn't good enough to go all the way. After a while, I attempted to go back and rework it -- tweak it here, change characters there, add a dab of angst and a cup of complication, etc. But instead of making it better I just made it worse -- like trying to brighten water colors by mixing them together. And in the ensuing years, I have lost both the hard copy manuscript and the computer on which the electronic file was stored....
But... in thinking about possible ideas for my next story, it occurred to me that I might just want to go back and try my hand at that novel again...
But not try to recreate it from memory.
Go back and ask that original question, fresh, with a blank slate in my mind: "What would happen if magic itself were dying, and the protagonist had to cross into another realm 'to find the Lost Spell' that would save magic itself?"
And see what answers my mind comes up with now, now that I grown, and learned, and grieved, and laughed for an extra 15 years....
But not yet. I think it's best, if I want to keep mentally limber (and I do), to work through lots of different, small ideas quickly. After I'm limber and confident and in good narrative shape, then I'll tackle "The Great Opus" ;-)
So, we're back to the opening question: "What should I write next?"
Is that as soon as you finish one story, you have to think up ideas for the next one.
That's one reason I made this resolution: to keep my mind limber...
But all this thinking has got me thinking... of all the story ideas I've had in the past, and which I could recycle ;-).
And there is a story I wrote -- a full length children's novel, as a matter of fact, that almost went down the road to being published.
It started when I was in college, as a series of dreams I had, with recurring characters, about a wizard and his big white shaggy dog, and a band of children of all nationalities, and in each dream in which they appeared, they had to "find the lost spell" that would help someone in need (the specific problem and the locale of each dream was different, but the wizard was always the same, and he was always accompanied by an annonymous band of culturely diverse, boistrious kids).
Anyway, the summer just before my senior year of college, I decided to write the basic idea of the dream into a "short" story. It didn't take long for me to realize it wasn't short at all, so, going into my senior year, I created my own one credit course around writing it, and finished it up as a novel (the finished product, btw, had very little in common with my series of dreams, except that it was about "trying to find the lost spell"). My professor suggested I try to get it published. So I did... I did try -- but maybe not as persistantly as I should have.
Anyway, after I left college, I didn't do much with my life really, and that was driving my mother up the wall, so I decided to go on and get my master's degree in creative writing. (This was 12 years ago -- the first Gulf War was going on then, and I wasn't happy about it, then, either). All through this time, I was tentively looking for an agent for my book, and not finding one.... And my mother's breast cancer was matasicizing, and I knew she was on the road to death. Then, a writer friend and mentor of mine suggested that I send the manuscript to her agent. And so I did. And I began to have the idea that maybe, just maybe, I could sign a publishing contract before my mother died, and wouldn't that be a nice gift for her -- to let her know that I would at least get some money in royalties and get my name into the wider world before she left me, and I was planning on making the dedication to her in the front.
Except. Months went by, and I never heard back from the agent. Finally, I plucked up the courage to call her, and she said: no, she wouldn't take it on, because, although it was good, it wasn't good enough -- the "voices" of the two main characters were too much alike. If I had been at any other point on my path, I would have taken this criticism in stride, and gone back to see what I could do to correct the problem. As it was, I was devestated.
Now, my mother had made me all but promise to assume she'd get well, and not tell anyone she was sick while I was at school. But after I got off the phone with the agent, my face must have showed the ultimate defeat I was feeling, because my friends asked me what was wrong, and I told them about my mother's cancer for the first time.
She died two weeks later.
According to the school's policy, l could have taken a year off for bereavement time, and not lose any credits toward my degree. I decided against this option, however.
Going home would have meant going back to isolation (our nearest neighbors were 1/4 mile away, down a rough, steep dirt road), leaving the community I had become a part of, when I needed community support most of all, and going back to a house that wasn't nearly as barrier-free as the college campus, and that meant I would have been dependant on Dad at a time when he was grieving, too. But the truth was, I couldn't really do the work anymore, while in grief, and I just coasted along. I passed all my course work, and completed all the requirements for the degree, though -- except for one thing. I missed a little 3 X5" slip of paper I was supposed to file by a certain deadline. Because I missed that deadline, I had to sign up for an extra credit, to complete over the summer while at home.
Well, after I got home, the grief really hit, and I just couldn't do the work. I got an "F" on that extra credit (which I wouldn't have needed at all, if I'd caught that slip of paper in time), and that brought my whole grade point average down, so I no longer qualified for the degree. Acquaintances have asked why I didn't appeal for it, but at the time, the idea of going through all that paperwork and red tape was as appealing as the idea of getting shot in both kneecaps with a 9 millimeter... I did the work, I honed my craft, I learned about myself as a person, and I became a stronger, better writer. That's what I went in there, for, anyway.
Long story short: while the book was good enough to go down the path toward publication, it wasn't good enough to go all the way. After a while, I attempted to go back and rework it -- tweak it here, change characters there, add a dab of angst and a cup of complication, etc. But instead of making it better I just made it worse -- like trying to brighten water colors by mixing them together. And in the ensuing years, I have lost both the hard copy manuscript and the computer on which the electronic file was stored....
But... in thinking about possible ideas for my next story, it occurred to me that I might just want to go back and try my hand at that novel again...
But not try to recreate it from memory.
Go back and ask that original question, fresh, with a blank slate in my mind: "What would happen if magic itself were dying, and the protagonist had to cross into another realm 'to find the Lost Spell' that would save magic itself?"
And see what answers my mind comes up with now, now that I grown, and learned, and grieved, and laughed for an extra 15 years....
But not yet. I think it's best, if I want to keep mentally limber (and I do), to work through lots of different, small ideas quickly. After I'm limber and confident and in good narrative shape, then I'll tackle "The Great Opus" ;-)
So, we're back to the opening question: "What should I write next?"
