Current Project: The Witch of the Little Wood
New Words: ~4,000 new words in the last round of writing last week
Current Total Word Count: 13,690
Goal: Complete the story (this short story is turning into a novlette, I think).
Random Rough Sentence(s): Her hair was a nest of nettles, her skin gouged and wrinkled bark, her eyes the green of light pooling through leaves.
Notes: I’ve managed to get through two climactic scenes (very fun to write) with one major confrontation left to write and then several scenes of resolution to round things out. (I also have a scene that needs to be added to the beginning in order to make the mom more sympathetic.) Hopefully I’ll be able to get through all of those before the next Writing Gang meeting in a couple of weeks. That way IÂ would have the first draft done before I head off to Australia, giving me time to let things simmer.
Writing a story that jumps between a past event and present events is an interesting process, because while the past influences and must reflect in the present scenes, it also has its own arc and own climax. I’ve been going back and forth between the past and present as IÂ write, which has allowed me to discover parallels between the two arcs, which is kind of cool, but it also is a cause of anxiety for me because I’m not entirely sure the past and present mesh as well as they should (though my Writing Gang assures me otherwise). I guess I just have to get the whole thing written, so IÂ can look at it in entirety and see what works and what doesn’t. The joy of revision.
The feedback I’ve been getting from the Gang has put a whole other idea in my head for this story, namely that it could be easily stretched into a novel — which has my head spinning. I had not thought of it before, but as soon as they said it, the idea started to germinate and now I have notes for starting to expand it. Making it novel is a scary concept, though, because it’s such a bigger work. It would require completely restructuring everything (the past/present alternation wouldn’t work, for example) and adding a litany of new characters and figuring out just who the Bear is and what he wants as my potential alternate villain.
So, in the meantime, I’m going to focus on finishing the story as a story, in the hopes of submitting it to various magazines (though there aren’t many that will accept this kind of length).
Other Projects in the Works:
The Untitled Werewolf Novel has been put on hold for the time being, while I work on “The Witch of the Little Wood” having settled firmly into the pre-planning stage. Don’t worry it’s not going to live there. My plan is to start getting chapters onto the page as soon as IÂ finish the Little Wood short story. The Werewolf Novel keeps popping up every now and then tugging at my sleeve with new scene ideas and character arcs, so I won’t be able to ignore it for long.
I also have a couple of poetry manuscripts to work on. Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press is holding a chapbook competition, and it occurred to me that I have 10-20 pages of poetry that I could submit. I’ve been gazing at poetry chapbook competitions for a while now, thinking that I should submit to one, but haven’t felt like my work was cohesive or up to par enough to submit. Now I think I just might have a collection that would work — maybe.
You know those letter-poems I’ve been writing for the 30 Day Letter challenge that IÂ never finished… well, I need to finish it, because I’ve been talking with the rather fabulous collage artist Jill Allyn Stafford about putting together a book that combines her art made out of international envelopes with my letter-poems. We’re both stoked on the idea (even though we’re not sure what publishers to approach about this sort of thing). First, I need to get those poems written.
And because I don’t have enough projects going on, there’s the Not-so-Secret Screenplay. I got an email about a script competition from Script Magazine, in which you have to come up with a script idea for a logline (which is: “After waking to find his wife dead in their backyard, a man conducts his own investigation and uncovers the hidden life of a woman he thought he knew.”) and submit the 15 pages.
Of course, instead of thinking, gee, I’ve got a lot on my plate right now, I think, gee, I can work with that, and my mind immediately started trying to put a supernatural spin on the story. So, yeah, now I’ve got a screenplay idea kicking around my head along with everything else. Deadline for the 15 pages is August 30th … we’ll see if I can pull it off.
