Friday, August 13, 2010

Stories and Falling Stars

I'm so pumped! Yesterday I finished the rough draft of the story inspired by the LegendFire contest prompt (can't mention the title as voting is still underway). It's been a long time since I've been this excited by a story idea and this pleased by the results. Not sure I've ever written a story this quickly either. In other words, it's been too long since I've experienced that magic that happens when the story falls together and tumbles out virtually without effort. A couple of brainstorming sessions and the thing flowed like silk. I couldn't decide which ending I was going to go with until the day before I wrote it; if I couldn't predict how it would end, likely a reader won't either.

And when the author feels this optimistic about a story, my hope is that an editor will pick up on that, too. I mean, I've written some crap stories. I knew they were crap, and they're still reeling in rejections. The only issue is that this story is 3000 words longer than what I had aimed for. 8k is an average length for my work. So while I'm not surprised, it would've been nice to keep the word count down a bit. Still, the story has meat, and that matters enormously to me. So 8k it is.

Last night was also the night for the best viewing of the meteor shower. Comet shower? Meh, whatever. So a little before midnight, my husband and I drove out to the middle of nowhere to count shooting stars. To the northeast we have terrible light pollution from OKC, but we were still able to count 17 for-sure shooting stars in little less than an hour. Others in the peripheral vision or right after a blink may have been legit too, but we didn't count those. Cows lowing in the distance, crickets and an owl, along with the wind in the high grass made for a lovely hour under the stars.

(Next writing project, while I'm slogging away on the novel revisions: another Lucien Levenger story, inspired by Sam's Dot anthology idea about Potter's Field. Whether or not I'll submit the story to them remains to be seen.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is the kind of positivity I like to see. It can be contagious. It is indeed a beautiful thing when a story "tumbles out virtually without effort", and I wish you all the best in placing this one with a good home.

JJ said...

I sometimes don't know what the next paragraph is going to say, let alone know where the story is going to end. Stories are personal journeys to me. I go wherever they do.

Mine used to average around 8k, but they got shorter as I became more used to travelling.