Sorry I haven’t posted for a while. I’ve been busy writing other things.
I’ve been so busy, in fact, that it’s been over a week since the event I wanted to talk about here: my first monthy Story Days.
Story Days were my idea for carrying forward the optimism and go-hung attitude I acquired at Boot Camp. Basically, the idea was that I’d give myself two days to reprise the two principle assignments from Boot Camp: coming up with five story seeds, and one full-length story. Well, a couple of weekends ago, Mark and I decided to go for it. I would do my two assignments, and he would get into the spirit of things by completing half a online course about iPhone development.
We got started bright and early on Saturday morning. By about 4 P.M, I had my ideas, and I was happy with them. Then began the process of choosing which one. The first idea to hit the cutting floor was low-hanging fruit: it was a cute enough idea, but it just wasn’t compelling enough. The second had an ending that didn’t completely satisfy me. The third idea I cut felt like it would be hard to deal with at short story length. And then I was left with two ideas I really liked: one a literary idea, and the other a mystery. I decided it would be more useful to me to have something I could sell to a mystery magazine, so that’s what I went with.
And then I got started. The first three pages went down easy, so easy. That’s where I left it when I went to bed Saturday night. On Sunday I got up again and got another five pages or so before things got difficult. Real difficult. But the story got done, at at 10:30 P.M. I was able to relax and bask in my victory.
I have to confess: it wasn’t easy to attain the same level of pressure I had at Boot Camp. There weren’t going to be fifteen people I respected reading this story immediately, so it just didn’t matter as much, you know? I think the last scene or two suffered somewhat for this. But, the story is done.
I think I’ll do this again around the 15th of September. I would like to make it a monthly thing. The next time around, though, I may work on revisions instead. Because I am building up a backlog of things that need to get revised and sent out.