New Story

I’m still around. Been busy. Too much stuff has happened recently to even summarize, so I’m just going to give up and move on. Maybe I’ll get back to it later.

I finished a new story that I’m delighted with. A lot of the time, writing a story consists of just sitting your ass in the chair and struggling to add something significant to what you’ve already done, at which point you call it a day and go out for a walk and wonder what the hell you’re going to add to it tomorrow. But then occasionally you get a story that just comes alive and sweeps you away, where everything falls into place, where every scene is a joy to write, where there’s nothing you’d rather be doing, and where every interruption takes on apocalyptic proportions. The last story that really happened with for me was “Seeds-for-Brains” (way back in 2002, geez). This one was another. It was going so well I seriously considered skipping class to work on it, and I did skip bar night. I was also quite prepared to skip both parties I was invited to last night to work on it, but I finished it in the afternoon, so I did make it to one of the parties. (Once I found out the first party had a hot tub I couldn’t drag myself away to go to the second party.)

Note that there’s not necessarily any connection between how powerfully a story seizes the writer and how good it is. Some stories I really struggled with, like “Veil of Ignorance,” are among my best. Others that I loved writing have never seen the light of day. I certainly hope this new story is good, but even if it’s not, just the experience of writing it was awesome.