Paksworld

Sometimes when I agree to write a story for an anthology, I get the idea quickly, and the story rolls right out.  Novels don’t require “ideas”–they require a character who wants their story told.  But short stories for anthologies require an idea, because nearly always the anthology comes with a set of requirements: length and the date it should be turned in, but also thematic elements or tone or both that require coming up with  story that fits  it all in neatly.  

The story I turned in today is a story I agreed to write months and months ago, but it’s not really that story.   My first attempt at writing the story (so I wouldn’t be up against the deadline)  was a complete dud and turned its toes up and started stinking only a few pages in.  The second story seemed to have a solid attachment to all the requirements, but along about 3500 words I realized it was faking….pretending to grow nicely, while actually increasing in wordage that did nothing in terms of real story elements.   The maguffin was too clever and too limiting, and though I had come up with the perfect punch line…there was no way to get from where I was to the punch line.  I tried several times.  Severalmany times.   By then it was May.  I had been sure I could finish the story before then.  The deadline was the end of July.   I fought the story two weeks longer than I should have, then started another, this one also showing promise at first, but it sank slowly into the tar pit of my brain and now it was July.  I dragged at it desperately for another week, threatened my brain, told it we MUST be done by July 15 (among other things, because husband’s birthday is this weekend.)   It disappeared into thick, gooey, hot mental tar.  And it was July 10.  Then 11.  Then 12.   I couldn’t sleep at night; all I wanted to do in the day was sleep.   I couldn’t write on the book, either, because this thing’s deadline was first.

I had a serious talk with myself (judge, jury, & executioner type talk)  and one little mental image flickered into life, along with the memory of what an emu sounds like (musical) and hearing an annoying background bell-sound added to the background sound in a bad TV program I was watching because my mind had become this black tarry mess.  Emus, if you’ve never heard one, make the most amazing sound.  They have those long necks, and the sound is nothing like any other bird I’ve heard–it’s a mellow sort of bubbling poot or hoot, as if their necks were wooden flutes of the same size.

Laden with anxiety, I went to the computer and started yet another story for the anthology.  Unusually, it wanted to be written in first person.   I thought momentarily of arguing with it, but the impulse to write was so fragile I didn’t dare try to shove it around (and a viewpoint change is a shove.)   I tried even harder than usual to lock the onboard editor in a soundproof safe and just follow the three little things I had…and the viewpoint of the man who was seeing that, and hearing that other, for the first time.   The first few paragraphs went smoothly…and then…another few.   My POV character solidified, along with his wife, house, neighborhood.   I resisted, very gently, being drawn into the complexities of the entire neighborhood’s social structure (as I might have, for a novel) and just let the story drift downstream, hoping it wouldn’t catch on a sandbank or be sucked into a hydraulic if we moved faster.

Sometime on July 13, the story stopped briefly (sandbank?  sunken log?  Another failure?)  and when it moved again it had made the crucial turn none of the others had reached–the twist that complicates and solves both.  I fell into bed after midnight, word-blind from lack of sleep, and woke up the next morning with the story moving strongly toward its finish.   I had the first, very rough draft done by midday, about, and sent it off to a few people.   Then I worked on it some more, because though even I could tell it was a story–it had made the “heel turn” and had come to an end that satisfied me–I had been dragged down by the other stories and needed reassurance.  There’s always more to be done–a better choice of words, a transition that could be neater, a missing bit that will fill in a gap, etc.   Got responses from the people I’d sent it to,  and went to bed before midnight (not long before, but before.)   This morning, I did the final read-throughs and polishing (maybe another 2-3 versions varying by very little) and then sent it in.

One fence down. The rest of the course (the book) to ride.