Chekhov Diary – Week 8 – “Three Sisters”

Monday – 12/19 – Began this week’s story, working-titled “Four Sisters Walk into a Bar.” Andy’s challenged me to write a story in the mode of one of his favorite SF authors, and I’m going to give it my best shot, but GOSH. It’s going to be hard and it’s going to take a long, long, long time. Overtime anyone? Today I clocked in a mighty 400 words. Ouch. This style just requires a lot more thinking; I can’t just hash it out fast. It’s got to be deliberate. Careful. It will probably make my brain bleed…just a bit… May add some more this afternoon.

Tuesday/Wednesday – 12/20 – 12/21 – Missed journaling yesterday. Got caught up in a whirlwind of other to-be-done-before-the-Holidays stuff. I have no idea how many words have been added today, or yesterday, because I’ve been writing this story by hand. It’s a strange experience; I rarely (RARELY) write by hand these days–my spelling is sloppy and my penmanship is a bit cryptic (not, perhaps, as bad as it could be), and my worst plague is simply that the muscles of my hand don’t enjoy writing for periods of time longer than forty-five minutes. I think I push too hard with the pen or something. Regardless: writing by hand has helped–I think–in the construction of this story, since I’m trying to replicate a very specific style and need to really think about everything I’m putting down. I already know that when I type it in on Friday, I’m going to have to make some significant changes, which I’ve already started noting. It’s going to be…interesting… Though it may not be good. :)

Thursday/Friday – 12/22 – 12/23 – Missed journaling yesterday too, due to the holidays, but writing still got done! :) And today, the story is complete. I’ve shortened the title to “Three Sisters” for now, and it’s clocked in at 3556 words. While it’s a lot shorter than others from this year, it took infinitely more time for that meager 3.5k. Writing by hand was an interesting experience, and showed me how much more time I could (and perhaps should) take when it comes to choosing the words I really want verses the first ones that pop into my head in a rush to get a story down. Whether or not “Three Sisters” is successful may not be something I can judge for a few months; the ending feels a bit abrupt to me at this moment, but there are parts I really like. I suspect it will benefit from a number of rewrites in which I can condense the language more. That’s one thing I’ve discovered about writing on the computer verses by hand: it makes it so much easier to write more words than I might need. I find I explain a lot more when I write via computer than I do on paper, simply because writing by paper makes me slow down and consider whether I *really* need X sentence, or X word, or X description. It’s been fun! Hard and rather trying at times, but overall, worthwhile. I may have to do this again sometime this year!

But it’s done! Happy holidays everybody! :D