About Last Week’s Story

From a craft perspective, last week’s story, “Bertrand Seizes the Day”, is a disaster. It starts in third-person point of view in past tense, then shifts midway through to first-person, then a few paragraphs later to present tense, then back to past tense in the last few paragraphs. It’s all about a guy who goes to one of the recode centers from my thirteenth story, “Innocuous”, and things go horribly, horribly wrong. But he decides at the end to roll with it: to seize the day, as it were. Sure, he loses his reputation as a well-loved servant, but what the heck. Sometime sacrifices have to be made.

I don’t like this story, but I’m saving it anway. I didn’t like “Trying to Stay Dead” when I first wrote it, but I’ve learned to love it, and it’s been published twice.

In other writing news, I’ve been working hard on revisions to Padma. I’m enjoying this process very much, even if some of my favorite scenes have to be cut out and some of the other scenes have to be painfully rewritten. A friend of mine says she takes on edits at the end of the day “as a treat”, and I think she’s crazy. Still, it is pretty spiffy to see the story come together in the way it’s supposed to.

Oh, and I’ve also continued revisions on “Sister Elodie and the Matter of the Time Pirates”, from Prompt No. 9. This one will be epic when it’s done, and I have a market to submit it to in mind.

This Week’s Prompt:

This week’s prompt is from the Story Engine’s Fantasy Deck:

A half-Orcish warrior wants to obtain a rare spell component from a tree, but they will bring darkness to those whose paths they cross.

I think I’ll involve a dragon, too, or a giant wyrm. I’ve always been intrigued by the notion of the Yggdrasil from Norse mythology, so maybe I’ll put that in as well. After all, it’s the One Tree. I will have to be careful about cultural appropriation, but… Well, these stories I’m writing are meant only for me to practice new techniques and hone my craft. No one else will see them, at least in their raw forms, so I can do anything I want in them.

This Week’s Recommendation:

Most stories that we consume in the West, from movies to games to television to short stories to novels, follow a few traditional forms; maybe Freytag’s Pyramid, or the Snowflake Structure, or the Hero’s Journey, for example. These are all fine, and work quite well for the stories that they tell. But they’re not the only way to tell stories.

Enter Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird by Henry Lien. This book is about other storytelling structures from other sources besides Western narratives: the four-act structure, the nested structure, and the circular structure. I had a blast reading this book, and I have been recommending it to my other writer friends.

A Wee Life Update

I go back to work in the office full-time starting in three weeks, and this is causing me considerable anxiety. I’ve been a remote employee for several years now, and it’s been great. I’m far more productive when I’m working at home. My anxiety lessens because I’m near the cats and my wife. And without the commute I have more time to write and read. I’m also healthier on the whole and take fewer sick days because I’m not catching the colds and respiratory infections from my co-workers that cause my asthma to flare up. I have a lot more to say about this, but I won’t do that here.

Today, I’ve been feeling unwell. I sleep three hours past my wake-up time, and took a two-hour nap in the afternoon, and I’ve been unable to function properly. I finally realized about two hours ago that it was because my anxiety was spiking because of the above news, and because I’ve been browsing the Anxiety Machines (social media). So I did some meditation, took a pill, and have resolved to stay away from Facebook, at least for the rest of the day (well, after I post this link to the socials, at least).

I hope you all, both my fearless readers, have a great week. Stay safe. Stay kind.