A new story up and the results of the retreat
First off, since I promised I would share it as soon as I had information on the publication date, my short story, “Bringing Light to the World,” went up at Fickle Muses on Sunday! I wrote this story, which is a retelling of a Native American legend, about a year and a half ago. Unfortunately, a good number of the anthologies I submitted it to did not end up getting published. So it spent a lot of time floating about until it found a home! But I’m very pleased that it did, and hope you enjoy reading it!
Now, as to the results of the retreat! First of all, we all had a fabulous, productive time. We all sat down and talked about our goals on Friday night, we spent the better part of Saturday hunkered down over our individual projects, and capped off Saturday evening with wine and Russian Gypsy fortune telling. Sunday was a bit more of a non-productive day (for me, at least) because we had to leave by noon, and I pretty much vegged out as soon as we got home!
While I technically did not reach my stated goals, I think I may have done a little better than planned. I just succeeded differently!
Finish the Tam story (1,000-2,000 words)
I ended up writing maybe 500 new words on this story, but it’s not done yet. It’s considerably closer, though. I just need to finish up the final scene, which is already partially written. I should be able to knock out the rest of that scene this week, and then I’m going to let this one simmer for a couple of weeks before I revise it.
Rework and finish the Bernard story (at least 2,000 new words)
I didn’t even open this file. This is on my agenda for next week.
Start the mermaid story (get 1,000 words)
Started. And finished! The house we rented was on a lake, and when I woke up Saturday morning and looked out at the lake, all of the pieces for this story fell together in my head. So I went outside before breakfast and got about 500 words written in my notebook. I wrote a chunk of the story in my notebook while sitting on the dock with my feet in the water. I took some pictures of the scenery that figure into the story. I’m letting this one simmer for a couple of weeks before I take a stab at revisions, but I’m really happy with how it all turned out!
Work on the young king story (at least 1,000 new words)
I got the portion of the story that I had written on my phone transcribed, which amounted to about 500 words. I think I wrote one or two extra lines after that. (As a note, I don’t always transcribe stuff from my phone. I usually just Email it to myself and copy it into a Word document. But since I was trying to not get onto the internet, I decided transcription was the better plan.) This one is on the schedule for the last week of September.
Revise “Vodyanoi” (read and dissect each scene)
Done. When I sat down to dissect it, I discovered that I had a couple of scenes that the protagonist was barely in, or that didn’t have much in the way of tangible conflict. I also had one scene that was over 3,000 words and contained the meat of the action. So I cut out everything but that one scene, and another scene after it that was essential to the story having closure. I think it still works this way, and will be a more efficient story. It’s out for the hubbie to look at, and I’m hoping to send it to a couple of other readers as well before I submit it elsewhere. (This is a story that I’ve been submitting to a lot of places. It looks now like it wasn’t quite ready for primetime.)
Revise Tick-Tock Tabby (outline all scenes)
Didn’t even open the file. I’m going to work on this in October.
So yeah, I only really worked on two projects, but I completed both of them, rather than just getting a bit of a start on them. So I call that a win. This is the first short story (non-flash) that I’ve completed since January!
I also spent some time thinking about what needs to get done, so that I can stay on target. Hopefully my scheduled writing can get some of these other goals knocked out, and I can get a bunch of new stories out into circulation soon!
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