I’ve been concentrating on short stories lately. While my experience writing in that form is limited, I’m finding it difficult to embrace. It has it’s advantages–a complete story in basically what would be the chapter of a novel–there are more that I’ll mention, but there are also disadvantages to the form as well.

Advantages:  Learning economy of words–short of poetry, I can’t think of a better way to learn to be succinct and get the most across in the shortest amount of words. Also, the aforementioned complete story in the space of maybe 5k words. The short story doesn’t allow boredom. One can simply finish a story and move on to a nice new shiny idea and then another, and another. The blood, sweat, and tears just isn’t there in a short story as it is in a novel.  Just the sheer number of words the novel requires makes the short story very satisfying to get ideas out.

Disadvantages:  Developing multiple characters and stretching out. There are times I just want to keep going on a certain topic, and then I realize I need to keep it going or the short story will turn into a novelette, and morph into a novella, or novel. I love to write from multiple POVs, meaning: I like to have multiple POV characters and write chapters based on their POV. Similar to George R R Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice series, but of course I could only hope to write half as well as GRRM.

On the surface, it may seem there are more advantages to the Short Story, but the chance to fully develop characters and be able to live with them for thousands and thousands of words in a novel is very appealing to me. I find it very hard to get in the mind of a character in a short story, and maybe I’m just missing the point in that form. I’ve read that in Science Fiction short stories it’s more the gimmick that the story evolves from, and in the end the character learns something meaningful. I know that is a simplification, but I’m just too lazy to quote from the actual text.

Well, I’m going to keep plugging away on the short stories. I do feel they are a great way to break into writing–at least into Science Fiction and Fantasy. On a related note, I got notification back from the Writers of the Future Contest that I did not win, and in fact, I didn’t even place in the competition. The good news is that I submitted the first short story I had ever written and the coordinating judge for the contest, K.D. Wentworth (a past winner and published writer of fantasy and sci-fi) submitted stories five (5) times before she won. So, I don’t feel bad, I’m still learning and with each story I can only get better.

So for now, I’m busy writing short stories, and revising the ones I’ve finished. I still need to finish revisions on my novel Progeny, which I’m becoming more excited about revisiting.

I’ve become fascinated (after writing some sci-fi short stories) with writing a Science Fiction novel. I’ve been tossing some ideas around in my head, but decided I needed to re-educate myself on modern physics. It’s been almost 20 years since I’ve taken a college level physics class and I’m quite sure there have been major advances since then….

For some light reading I chose Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku. Very easy read so far, it’s definitely written for the layman, and at times I find myself wanting a little more number crunching and pure science. Overall I’d recommend the book if you are at all interested in cosmology but are afraid to pick up a book on it for fear it will be over your head.

Alistair

I’ll start with what’s been going on in my writing world:

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted to the blog, but I’ve been updating my word counts daily on the main webpage. I’ve been working on another science fiction short story to enter into the Writers of the Future Contest. I submitted a story back in September for the same contest, and should be hearing within the next month whether or not my story has been chosen. I’m a little nervous, but I know that either way I’ll continue to learn the craft of writing, and improve with each story I write. For those who are not aware, this contest has been discovering new writers for over 25 years now, and is judged by well-known and respected names in the Science Fiction and Fantasy communities. To be a finalist in the competition opens quite a few doors, not to mention publication in an annual anthology.

Once I’m finished with the current short story, I’ll be working on the revisions for the Progeny novel. I completely rewrote the beginning a couple months back and I think it has provided some grit and immediacy to the entire story. I’ve learned that revising is difficult. It isn’t hard for me to chop off words, or make subtle changes.  The hard part for me is the macro editing: looking at the entire story and seeing how all the pieces fit, and if they’re all doing what they are supposed to be doing, as well as knowing when to add or subtract big pieces from the story.  I thought I’d be able to have the first revision to Progeny done by the New Year, but….

Life happens, and it has happened in good ways for me:

I got married to my long time girlfriend on November 1st, 2009 in Washington, D.C., which was an amazing event in my life. We then took a transatlantic voyage on the Queen Mary 2 from New York to England, and spent a few days in London. An incredible honeymoon, and an absolutely awesome way to begin our marriage.

The month leading up to the wedding was full of stress however, as our day job didn’t see fit to cooperate with our carefully laid plans for her to move down to Northern Virginia.  In the end it all worked out, but getting to that point was pure hell. So, with my personal life at an all time high, I’m poised now to enter a very creative phase, and I’ve even felt an itch to compose some music again, but we’ll see.  I don’t want other creative endeavors to take away from my writing, so the music just may need to take a back seat until a few things are completed.

So, now that my life has somewhat settled down again, I believe I can find the time to blog on a more regular basis!

Alistair

Revising.  I love the idea of revising.  So, I let my completed manuscript sit for about a month. I did absolutely nothing with it, I didn’t even think about it.  What did I do during that time?  I wrote a short story in a different genre.  I wrote the short story, let it sit for a week or so and then I revised that.

Why did I not go back to my 115k word novel? Well…for one I had a contest deadline I wanted to meet for the short story.  Plus, I figured revising the short story would be excellent practice for when I started on the novel. I learned a lot during the revisions on the short story, and I also learned that I had to let it go.  No matter how many times I read it after a revision I always found things I could fix or tinker with. Finally, I had to stop. I read it through after I don’t know, nine revisions and said that’s it.  I checked it for obvious errors and just sent it away to the contest.

I think the process of editing the short story was important for how I was going to tackle the 115k word novel. Seeing the short story grow with each revision excited me and I actually started to believe I could write an engaging story and craft interesting sentences.  Those sentences came to life and the characters became real.

So, now I’m revising my novel and it is still daunting. I’ve restructured the opening and believe it is much stronger this time. I know though that once I make it through the whole novel it is going to take a few more passes before I think it is anywhere close to being ready for me to query agents about it.

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While revising the novel I thought I’d write the second book of the series, but I’ve decided to write something entirely different. After I write this book I’ll go back to the series, but for now I think it’s a good idea to try writing something much different than the first book.  It’d be so easy for me to continue to write the series since I know the characters and setting so well, but I don’t want a comfort zone at the moment. In the end I think this will make me a better writer. Once I get the world built and some characters to inhabit the world I’ll post more on it.

Anyway, off to revising the Progeny manuscript.

Alistair