(This week’s featured image has absolutely nothing to do with the post, but it’s St. Patricki’s Day tomorrow, March 17, so enjoy!)

Last Week’s Story…

Well. “The Dingus Shrine”, based on the prompt I drew last week, was… not my best story. I wrote it without a plan, without even a first sentence, without even a title until Friday evening. I’m not sure where that title, “The Dingus Shrine”, came from, or what it means. All I know is it’s about a man who seeks revenge on a ruined shrine, and yes, he carries the scars for all to see.

Will I revisit this story in the future? Possibly. Probably. I’ve written plenty of stories in the past (not to mention a few novels) that felt wretched at the time I was writing them or just after I finished, only to find that they weren’t all that bad after all. One such story was “The Apocalypses of Cheryl Dean”, the first draft of which felt really awful to me. But after revisions, I realized it was actually a good story, and it was published in Issue No. 1 of Inner Worlds (see my Bibliography page for details on that and where to find it). And, of course, there are times when I revisit a story I was pleased with upon writing, only to find that it needed far more work than I felt was worth putting into it. I don’t feel bad about that. These things happen.

So, who knows? Perhaps “The Dingus Shrine” has a future after all.

This Week’s Prompt…

I drew last week’s prompt from the main deck of the Story Engine. This week I feel like writing some science fiction, so I’m going to draw from the Story Engine Science Fiction expansion deck: Written in the Light of Strange Worlds. Let’s see what we get:

A pilot wants to create a distraction with an unassuming body modification, but a deadly experiment will be relased from containment.

I have some ideas for this one already. Should be an interesting one.

Last year I took Cat Rambo‘s Advanced Short Story Workshop (which I highly recommend), and I’ve recently been reviewing my notes from it. I think a good exercise would be for me to focus on a different technique or element of short story writing from that class with each week’s prompt. I think for this one I will focus on setting, and we’ll see what happens.

This week’s recommendation…

I’ve mentioned my writer friend T. M. Baumgartner before, I think, but I’m pretty sure I haven’t mentioned her novel Theoretical Magic. I read an early draft of this one, and it is a sheer delight. There are some mighty original ideas about magic and academia and the corporate world and government bureaucracies and so on, and a spiffy main character. If you join her Patreon, she also recently sent out a short story set in the same universe.

That’s all for this week. Have a great week everyone, and remember to try to have at least a little fun this week.