And as of last night, the crappy first draft of a new short story is done! Early on in the draft, I predicted this one was going to push past the 6K mark. And it did. Crappy first draft has clocked in at 6,800 words. I am so proud of my eerily accurate word count predictions.
Now on to the second draft de-crapification process!
In the non-writerly acceptances category: much faster than I expected, a shiny acceptance from Rutgers for their Master of Library and Information Science program winged its way into my inbox today. And now that I’ve heard from both there and Drexel, I just need to make up my dang mind where I’m gonna go.
I’m pleased to report that my short story “Unlucky Clover” has been accepted for the July 2011 issue of Beyond Centauri. “Unlucky Clover” is a sequel of sorts to my story “Lucky Clover” (Flash Fiction Online, March 2008), following the son of that story’s leprechaun protagonist (who also makes an appearance in the sequel).
2) In a review of issue 20 of Black Static at Suite101, my story “The Wounded House” gets an “outstanding.” I’ll quite happily take that!
So, that last post where silly conversations with my uncooperative brain eventually led to me outlining the rest of the short story I’m working on? Well, yesterday I sat down to write, confident that I’d now be able to crank out some significant wordage and maybe even finish the first draft, only to discover that, somehow, none of the outline had saved. I’m rather obsessive compulsive about constantly saving my work, so how I managed to completely lose half an hour’s worth has me completely baffled (not to mention annoyed as all get out).
So instead of finishing the story, I spent most of yesterday’s writing time redoing the outline.* There were many frustrating moments of “I know my protagonist was going to do this next, but for the life of me I can’t remember why.” Eventually, though, my plot came back together. Who knows, maybe what I have outlined now is better than what I had originally. But still, the whole process took far longer than it should have.
I suspect that my brain did some self-sabotaging and made me unconsciously delete the original outline as revenge for me subjecting it to Battlefield Earth. The movie was on TV the other night, I was morbidly curious to see if it was as horrible as I had heard, and wow. Just wow. The sheer dreadfulness overpowered my ability to mock. I only made it through half an hour–approximately the same amount of time I spent doing that original outline. I think my brain decided, “You wasted 30 minutes of my life, so I’m going to destroy 30 minutes of yours.”
*I normally don’t outline short stories, but this one is the type where having a road map will be a huge help to my writerly sanity, even if I ultimately decide to take a different route.
ME: Ok, time to write!
BRAIN: No.
ME: What do you mean, no? I have a short story first draft that needs finishing, and I have time to work on it. Let’s do this thing!
BRAIN: No, I’d rather check Facebook again.
I’m not someone who has to have music on when I write. I’ve written in silence, and I’ve written in noisy places without benefit of music–or sometimes in places playing music I didn’t care for, which meant I tuned the music out. But I prefer to have music (that I like) on when I write.
And today we have an acceptance of the non-writing variety: waiting in my inbox earlier was a shiny acceptance from Drexel’s master in library and information science program. One grad school response down, one more to go! I am quite looking forward to the fall.
In theory, I should have had more writing time last week. In actuality, I didn’t make a lick of progress on the short story I had started the week before. But today? Oh, today was surprisingly lovely for a Monday. For what felt like the first time in ages, I sat down and just cranked out first draftage for three solid uninterrupted hours. About 1,400 words in all, which is pretty damn good for slow-going me. It’s all crappy first draftage, yes, but I think (hope) it’s going to clean up nicely. When the story’s done, that is. I usually get a good sense early on about how long a story is going to be, and I think this one’s going to push the 6K mark, at least.
In other and unrelated news: shiny new Apple trackpad! I’m quite loving this thing. It doesn’t make my hand all crampy and achy like a mouse would do after a day at the computer.
Shameless plug alert: my story “A Song Never Tasted” is now up on Daily Science Fiction‘s website for your reading pleasure/pain/critical dismemberment.
Barbara A. Barnett 
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