Short story stuff

With the first draft of Finnegans Afoot completed, I allowed myself to get started on a short story. Although unrelated to Finnegans Afoot in terms of character and plot, I have set it in the same community and even made use of one of the core motifs of that novel. It really could stand alone, though.

I’m enjoying the buzz I get from the early stages of creativity. I am immersed in a whole new story with different characters and a different (and a bit more comic) resolution. Plus I don’t feel the weight of 70,000 words ahead of me. This story will come in at under 4,000 words, and I’ll probably trim it considerably from that. In fact, when I sit down and write two hundred words, I’ll have deleted two hundred and fifty from what I’ve already written. So as the story progresses, it gets shorter. (There’s a philosophical conundrum. I wonder what I could do with that as an idea.)

This isn’t a story of a crime so much as one of those impossible scenarios. A criminal is eluding the authorities, and his means of escape is baffling. The resolution of the story is finding out how he did it. I’m having fun fooling around with that.

I expect to have a first draft finished in a week or so, then I’ll let it cool and revisit it later. I’ll also complete the read through of Finnegans Afoot (which I continue to appreciate more as I go). Then I really must get going on Sleep of Reason, which I desire and dread in equal portions.

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Tags: fiction, mystery, short story, writing

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