The new house is starting to look a lot more like ours, with our things around us and our stamp starting to appear. And work is getting there again too. I have a routine that I’m still getting used to sticking to, but it’s starting to look a lot like my routine, rather than feeling as though I’m bumbling from one thing to another with no real plan. We still don’t have any internet, so it’s looking like the last Wednesday of the month is when we’ll be going live.
Tuesday started with a washload hung on the line and another one put through. The poet had a number of Teams calls for work and I had to remember not to shout at the dog while the poet’s microphone was on. The cooling mat I ordered for the dog finally arrived, after being stuck in customs in China or somewhere for more than a week. It’s not a gel mat, it’s a silk mat. And it really is cool to the touch. The dog had a few rolls around on it and even lay down on it a couple of times, so it works, which is a good thing.
I spent a lot of the day being stumbled upon by the poet sitting on the bed or the settee and gazing into space. To him it looked as though I was having a bit of a seizure, as though the pea was in the wrong orbit. To me I was working Very Hard working on this folk horror story in my head. He asked me a couple of times what the story was going to be about, but until I had any of it written down, I wouldn’t reveal anything. Once the story is told, for me, the brain moves on to the next one, regardless of how it’s told.
While I folded washing, I thought about the setting. While I made us cups of tea, I thought about the community. I spent my reading hour finishing the Quick Guide to Writing Folk Horror by NR Fields. And while I was sitting, gazing into space, I was thinking about my main character and trying to remind myself that s/he would not feature at the end of the story.
That’s a big one for me, not having a traditional happy or twist ending. But at least it means I can’t put any of my serial characters in the story if they’re not going to come out at the other end. Stevie Beck can’t go and write a story for her newspaper. Taylor Costello, PI, can’t go and investigate a philandering spouse. Mavis Braithwaite can’t go on a birdwatching trip with her fellow coach passengers. And Marcie Craig can’t go and do a DJ stint for a party or special event.
Or not for this story they can’t.
Or they can, and it’s a different character who doesn’t come out at the other end…
I do like the setting and I do like the background I created for it all. But do I want to create a likeable character just to have them not survive?
Well, it is horror…
So that was a lot of what I was working on in my head as I went about my other business of the day.
The poet had to nip out to our local farm shop, the one just down the road that we haven’t been to yet and where he used to go fishing. But I was already working by this time, at my temporary desk in my little office nook. He wanted an onion for tea as he was making a prawn linguine and we didn’t have any. He came back with a healthy looking onion, and a large pork pie, and two muffin-sized buttercream butterfly cakes.
He said it’s a lot bigger now than when last we dropped in, but when we were last there everywhere was still recovering from lockdown. He said there are more fishing ponds, that the shop is much bigger, there’s a café there, and a butcher’s. They still don’t really allow dogs unless someone is fishing and they keep the dog away from the peg, close to their cars, which are parked a few feet behind the anglers. I do see fishing there in the poet’s future, but I can’t see the dog and me tagging along very often. Alfie would be bored out of his brain having to sit still for four or five hours.
It’s been a long time since we all went fishing together. Not so long since the poet went. But when we all go, I tend to follow in my car and walk the dog around the lake. That’s how long it’s been as Rufus didn’t get many walks in the last year of his life, due to his condition. And before that we had lockdown. I won’t be able to follow in my car here. I’d have to go with him, and so would the dog. Taking my car means I don’t have to hang around if I don’t want to.
We have the River Idle quite close to us now, and the River Torne. I think we’re more likely to all go there. There’s a long walk along the River Torne to a place called Candy Corner and back. There’s a shorter walk along the river to the next bridge and back too. The River Idle is more of a put-the-deckchairs-up-and-camp-out type of place…If we ever get the campervan keys back, we might do the River Idle in that. For excursions like that, the poet wants to put together a more portable fishing kit.
Anyway, back to my desk…I opened up my short story master file in Scrivener, flexed my fingers, and opened a new document for the folk horror…And that was as far as I got. I still wasn’t ready to get going, so instead I updated the file itself, which has text documents ready for the regular calls for submissions, one per call. For example, I have three text documents there already for three Dragonsoul Press anthologies I want to have a go at, each one with a target length of 3,000 to 20,000 words, each one with the theme they’re looking for and the deadline and publication dates.
In my browser I have a folder for the regular calls for submissions and I decided to go and collect the blurbs for the three stories I want to write over the next fortnight. I checked the signal on my phone, it was okay, and so I connected to the internet and did that, only to discover that the third one had already hit its cap of 1,000 submissions.
One thousand submissions. In a month. And there’s still a week left of this month. No wonder they cap it.
So I removed the date from the title of the Scrivener text document and moved it to next month. This left me with two stories left of the most recent new calls. The folk horror story and a ghost story.
I collected a few more to update the Scrivener file with, disconnected and went back those documents in the open calls folder to see if there was one I could replace the capped one with. Yup, there was one, and I could use it for any of my serial characters and for any genre. I won’t be exercising the horror writing muscle, but it should still get me back in the swing of trying to write at a story a week.
I chose the one after that one too, and the one after that one, to take me further into August. The first one was for the next of the Raconteur Press anthologies; the second was for Dragonsoul Press. I still have two empty weeks in August for the writing hour, but as I’m not even in August yet, and as there may yet be more new calls for submissions, I’m not worrying about that just now. I have client work booked in, but no writing work.
I’ve tried to work on each stage of writing a short story over several weeks, outlining it one week, writing the first draft the next week, revising it the following week, and so on, but I’m too impatient. Once I’ve started a short story, I want to finish it. I don’t mind leaving it to cool before sending it out anywhere. But spreading it over five weeks hasn’t worked. So I’m going back to a story a week, start to finish, and only leaving it to cool if I still have breathing space.
That’s always worked for me, especially when I was also writing two columns for two magazines. I’d work on Query, Outline, Draft, Revise, and Submit every day, for five different pieces, five days per week. It meant I started something new every day, and I submitted something every day, submitting the new piece five (week) days later. If I didn’t have any commissioned articles to write, I’d write a short story or a reader’s letter or a quick filler. And yes, I queried every day too, sending at least three article ideas to each market. Where did that writer go? 😀
Now, I outline on a Monday, write the first draft on a Tuesday, do the revisions on a Wednesday, proofread on a Thursday, and submit on a Friday. When I was doing the 12 Stories in 12 Weeks challenge, having to submit on a Wednesday completely threw me. I just had to remember to at least have it written by the end of the previous week so it was ready to go Wednesday morning. Too often, though, I ended up writing it on Wednesday morning too.
Because I’m writing three short stories over the next two weeks, the system has been truncated somewhat. But at the end of those two weeks, I hope to be back to a story a week.
I didn’t get around to the client edit on Tuesday because my head was filled with a new to me genre (horror), learning the sub-genres, and coming up with at least the bones of a story idea. And when I was ready to write something down, it was all the backstory and background and setting and community and everything else I’d been daydreaming about. And once that was all down, I was able to discuss it with the poet without losing any of it.
We took the dog for his walk before tea, because it looked like rain. And while the poet cooked tea, I brought all the washing in.
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