Go Big or Go Home

It's been a trying couple of weeks here in Aspiring Authorland. After plodding along at a pretty regular clip on a novel and completing about 1/3 of the first draft, I submitted it to an editor and asked for some objective input on how it was going.

Needless to say, his eyes didn't open wide with delight like Simon Cowell's did a few weeks back when Susan Boyle opened her mouth to start singing. His feedback was to stop, go back to the beginning, and start over from scratch. As hard as that was to hear, I actually agreed with him.

But while he was evaluating the manuscript, I shot out of bed one night with a perfect idea for a short story. I finished the final draft last night. It's called "Animal Control" and it's beautiful. Really. I showed it to this same editor, worked with him briefly on it, and submitted it this morning to "The New Yorker." As crazy as this sounds, I think it actually has a shot at being considered for publication there, or I wouldn't have sent it in. I'll post an update here once I hear back from them.

What did I learn from all of this?

• Go Big or Go Home

Write what you love. I was writing a formulaic novel because I had been reading agent blogs, editor blogs, publisher blogs and the like for months, and thought that if I could just piece together something that made sense and had a semi-interesting hook, it would sell. The problem with this approach? My heart wasn't that into it.

The exact opposite happened with the short story. It appeared one night, fully formed, demanding to be written. I will probably not make much, if any, money off of it. But it's pretty damn good. It's heart is in the right place, because I put all of myself into it.

On A Roll

Yet another short story came barrelling down the creative pipeline today. The working title is "Human Resources." More later as I try and organize my incoherent notes.

Crossing The Finish Line

I just finished the first draft of a 7,100 word short story called "Animal Control" that literally poured itself onto the page over the space of the last four or five days.

I've been working on a novel since January, working at the pace of about 2,500 words a week in my spare time, and feeling pretty good about that progress. But 25 pages in four days makes me feel as prolific as Stephen King (though to date, not quite as marketable).

I'd been noodling on the story for a few weeks at night, and approached it in a completely different way than the novel. I started with a 1/2 page outline for every scene and wrote from there. The final outline for the 25 page story was almost 6 pages long. This made the whole thing very focused, tight and controlled, building gradually to the conclusion. I'm starting to think that this might be the way to go for every story - outlining in such detail that every paragraph is building towards something. I've heard Elmore Leonard's outlines for his novels weight in at around 400 pages long, so he knows exactly what's going to happen in each scene before he even gets started.

Anyway, I'm spent. Time to watch some mindless TV on the couch for a few hours. If you're reading this, post a comment and let me know how your outlining process works, I'd love to hear about other methods.

Word Play

Today after karate class the girls and I were eating dinner at a greasy spoon, waiting for our grub, and talking about imaginary karate techniques. It went something like this:

"I'm training for my rainbow belt."

"Well I'm training for my one thousand black belt."

"The rainbow belt is after that. Duuuuh!"

"It is not."

"Is too."

"Then I'm training for my pink belt."

"Do you know Red Apron?"

"No."

"Then you can't get your pink belt. That's required. You know ... RED. PINK."

"And so is Evading Form Seventeen."

"Do you know Shattering Mirror?"

"No, but I know ... Dubious Reflection."

"What about Stare of Death?"

"So what you just ... look at them funny and they die?"

"Yes."

"I don't know that one either."

"You better get on that."