The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: short stories

  • In 2012, I Took Every Challenge

    From a writing standpoint, 2012 rocked.

    I sent out a novel for the first time. Even though it got rejected twice, the “revise & resubmit” was pretty much the best thing that could have happened.

    I finally (finally!) understand passive voice in my writing. I don’t always see it, and I don’t always correct it, but its so much better now. I’ve also gotten more confidence in my writing. I’ve taken more challenges, I’ve tried new genres.

    But most of all, I just wrote more. I usually wrote NaNo every year. But beyond that, I didn’t do much. A couple pieces of fan fiction here, a drabble there.

    In 2012, I wrote 256,213 words of fiction alone. I’m sorry, I bolded that to brag. In years previous, I would probably write NaNoWriMo, maybe a handful of one-shots. This year I went for pretty much every challenge that came at me.

    Crossover challenge with a minimum of 20,000 words? Hell yes. Shipping challenge, another 20,000? Here, let me write 40,000. Wait, lets do both months of Camp NaNo! Why the hell not? Oh, and don’t forget how into NaNoWriMo we all are.

    Sometimes I drowned. August got stuck watching my son while I locked myself in the bedroom to finish Camp NaNo August. (I did more or less the same thing in Camp NaNo June, but my husband was home to manage the child.) But I damn well got it done. (Okay, except the two flash fiction assignments I totally dropped the ball on. Whoops.)

    With the flash fiction assignments, short story ideas, and the handful of ideas I wrote without any sort of prompting, its been a great year. Unfortunately, it means that 2013 is going to be a year of an awful lot of rewriting and editing. But I got so much done in 2012, that I’m pretty amped about 2013.

    And hey, this month I’m jumping in with Sara & Ted to finish my NaNo novel in January.

  • Four Shots

    Dining Room, Storm Shelter – 2000

    Cellar Door by Michael Chan
    Cellar Door by Michael Chan

    At midnight I head down to the dining room for a cup of tea. My textbooks are still piled in the corner of the dining room table, my notebook open. I tighten my robe around my waist before I sit down and curl my legs up under me.

    I read the same line about DNA four times before I slam the book shut and stand with my tea, pacing in front of the doors. Mother’s car isn’t in the driveway — odd, considering the hour. Pacing gives way to exhaustion, though I still feel too keyed up to sleep. Every time I started to fall asleep, I heard Uncle Al in my head.

    I’m dozing off in front of my biology textbook when the sound rips me out of it — the bang that feels like it’s stopped my heart and forced the breath from my lungs. I blink rapidly. I’m almost convinced that the noise came out of my dreams when I hear a second and third gunshot in rapid succession. (more…)

  • Panning for Gold in the Dark

    A couple of weeks back the fabulous Confabulators weighed in on where their writing ideas come from.  I may backtrack a bit over some of that territory, because where they come from seems to be connected to the ideas I end up pursuing past the ‘idea’ stage.

    Looking back on the thousands of words I’ve written, I sort of see this pattern: for a novel or short story, what usually what gets me going, and keeps me engaged, is something I’m struggling to understand in my own life.

    For example:

    ~The aftermath of the unexplained death of my father became a short story about the changing relationship of two brothers, as one pulls away from what’s left of his family.

    ~Trying to understand marriage became a novel exploring the lives of a girl traded into white slavery and a man raised in the 1960’s “who did everything right and failed.”

    ~The idea of refuge and the families we make became a novel about the friendships between gay theater kids in college and their circle of friends (‘Fame meets Boogie Nights’.)

    ~Addiction, the allure of escapism, and personal betrayals (both perpetrated and experienced) became a book about a young girl’s search for her birth parents in an alternate reality. (more…)