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I finished a story! I finished a story! I finished a story!
Okay, so it's less than 5500 words of drunken antics and shagging, but it's a whole, entire, completely finished story! The first thing I've finished since, er, um...
I had such good intentions when I started this journal, and then real life came along with a double-helping of overtime and flu (three versions, in a row). But I have finished a story, a military band just marched down my road, and the sun is shining. ^___^ (Easily pleased, me?)
I've got two other projects on the go - an almost finished not-quite-novella that I wrote most of by hand while I was on holiday at Easter and haven't found time to go back to, and the timeslip romance I've been dipping into for years. I've also feeling that lovely rush of excitement - so many stories backed up in my brain and I could choose any of them to dive into now.
I've also got some editing to do on the finished story, but it needs a couple of weeks to mature before then, away from my eyes (the reason cheddar cheese was matured in caves, I learned on a trip to Cheddar Gorge last year, is that the caves stay at a constant 11°C year round, which is the perfect temperature for aging cheese. I wonder what the perfect storage conditions for maturing a story might be).
I'll also need to find it a title, which is more daunting. Some people seem to have a gift for titles - they can pluck the perfect, apt and witty phrase from nowhere. I'm not one of those people. If I don't work out the title with the initial idea, I struggle to find the right one. A title should sing. It should offer mystery and humour and thematic grandeur. It should flow in perfectly accented prose, more akin to poetry.
My titles, sadly, tend to limp, in a slightly sheepish, self-conscious way. They secretly wish they could announce themselves by clearing their throat politely and saying, "Um." They find the very idea of ostentatious glamour scary and in slightly poor taste.
And, in writing that, it occurs to me that my titles have a lot in common with my protagonists.
Am I the only one who battles to name a story? Any tips?
Anyhow, have an author's darling from the drunken boys in my new story, before they all get pruned away in the editing:
Okay, so it's less than 5500 words of drunken antics and shagging, but it's a whole, entire, completely finished story! The first thing I've finished since, er, um...
I had such good intentions when I started this journal, and then real life came along with a double-helping of overtime and flu (three versions, in a row). But I have finished a story, a military band just marched down my road, and the sun is shining. ^___^ (Easily pleased, me?)
I've got two other projects on the go - an almost finished not-quite-novella that I wrote most of by hand while I was on holiday at Easter and haven't found time to go back to, and the timeslip romance I've been dipping into for years. I've also feeling that lovely rush of excitement - so many stories backed up in my brain and I could choose any of them to dive into now.
I've also got some editing to do on the finished story, but it needs a couple of weeks to mature before then, away from my eyes (the reason cheddar cheese was matured in caves, I learned on a trip to Cheddar Gorge last year, is that the caves stay at a constant 11°C year round, which is the perfect temperature for aging cheese. I wonder what the perfect storage conditions for maturing a story might be).
I'll also need to find it a title, which is more daunting. Some people seem to have a gift for titles - they can pluck the perfect, apt and witty phrase from nowhere. I'm not one of those people. If I don't work out the title with the initial idea, I struggle to find the right one. A title should sing. It should offer mystery and humour and thematic grandeur. It should flow in perfectly accented prose, more akin to poetry.
My titles, sadly, tend to limp, in a slightly sheepish, self-conscious way. They secretly wish they could announce themselves by clearing their throat politely and saying, "Um." They find the very idea of ostentatious glamour scary and in slightly poor taste.
And, in writing that, it occurs to me that my titles have a lot in common with my protagonists.
Am I the only one who battles to name a story? Any tips?
Anyhow, have an author's darling from the drunken boys in my new story, before they all get pruned away in the editing:
“Decamped,” Paul clarified. “In high-whatchacallit. Dungeon.”
“You can’t have a high dungeon,” Silas said, swaying on his feet as if the only thing holding him up was the tightness of his jeans. “Dungeons are underground.”
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