Wednesday – 1/18 – Wow, I’m getting bad at journaling to keep up with this, but I’m going to blame the increasing hectic nature of my schedule than laziness. *shifty eyes* This week’s story I’m writing by hand, anyway, so there aren’t any word-counts to report just yet. This is the second story–SCRATCH THAT!–*third* story I’ve written by hand this year, which is an all-time record for me. The last time I wrote a story by hand was probably getting close to four years ago. It’s been a very interesting learning experience. I’m finding that for SF/Fantasy/Horror genre work, I tend to prefer my laptop, which allows me speed, but for more straight-forward literary stories, I much prefer writing by hand. It lets me 1) slow down, so I can actually think about what words I’m picking and whether or not a detail is relevant, and 2) it gives me that awesome versatility to flip-flop on words–crossing them out, then considering, then re-writing them back in–or add additional info in the margins without changing anything else. It’s a bit more like sketching, which I rather like. I don’t know if I could do it with a story that requires a lot more planning or plot-driven action–I don’t write by hand very fast, and for the action-y bits, I do prefer the speed of a keyboard. But for exploring a theme or a character or a setting? Fabulous! I’m going to have to do this more often.
Saturday – 1/20 – As if I could come up with a more presumptuous title! :) No, no, but seriously folks–this is the first (other than *maybe* “Snap”) that qualifies as a non-genre short story. It’s not great, to be sure, but I did have fun writing it. Finished it yesterday, actually, but typed it up today and added it to my growing folder of new drafts for later review. Its final word count was about 1.9k.
Did go back back and re-read part of “Three Sisters” and “Swallow,” both of which I actually enjoyed immensely! Looking forward to possibly editing that one to a place where I could think about submitting it.
Twelve stories down, only forty more to go! :) That doesn’t sound *that* bad… O_o
Maggie Slater 