Idea Down

I have sadly fallen out of another competition. I know the competition was fierce because the feedback I received was hugely positive.

I'll share the story at the bottom but I've hit on another idea that I think is affecting how I write. I have a head full of ideas some days. As much as possible, I try to write down at least the core of the idea before I lose it. It's happened too many times to risk.

A few months back I had a story pop into my head fully formed. I didn’t have my backpack with me and so had no notebook. Once the panic settled I grabbed my phone and tried to take notes but the idea was completely gone. I felt angry and foolish and spent two days beating myself up for being badly prepared and letting my panic get the best of me.

Fast forward a few months and I found my job (including the commute*), family and trying to make time for my health was eating up all my time. I barely had time to read, let alone write. When I went to the Facebook writing group to ask how people find the time the very first comment I got was:

People make time for stuff they care about. It's really as simple as that.

I came for advice and instead I got judgement. I'm not ashamed to say I cried.

This is the main reason I enter competitions. With a topic or genre to focus on and a deadline to meet, I find I have to focus. More importantly, if the competition connects with the ideas in my head, I have an excellent trigger to get them on the page.

I'm hoping this will be practice that gets me into better writing habits. As for reading, I have had to force myself to make some time. It isn't easy! But I need it.

Anyway, to the story. Hope you enjoy it.

One Small Step

“Amelia, is it working?”

“I said ‘wait’, Mark. You know? Let time pass?”

A tingling sensation crawled up her neck. The world was tinged violet, then it faded.

“Damn!” Amelia grabbed some tools, adjusting the connections between the controls panel and the cage just behind. She daisy-chained more alternators to the existing set. Then she whispered a private prayer and flicked the switch.

That tingle, the violet light and the cage was empty. Not just empty but filled with a void, intense cold emanated from it forming a circle of frost.

“Bloody hell!”

Trust Mark to ruin the moment, she thought as she put on protective clothes.

“As soon as I step in, push the blue button.”

“You’re going in there? Amelia, anything could happen.”

“That broken message came from me. I know it did. I’m going to find out what it means. I’m only going three days into the future. After five minutes, push the blue button again.”

She stepped into the frigid air, waiting for Mark to build up the courage.

Amelia crouched as a wave of nausea hit her.

She was still in the cage, the familiar laboratory tiles just outside.

“Shit. Mark, could you…”

The circle of tiles lay in an open space. All around her an empty world stretched as far as the eye could see. A violently severed hand lay on the edge of the tile circle. Mark.

This shouldn’t have happened. Can’t happen. She needed power. She had to send word...

* In case you're wondering why I don't read and write while commuting, I get terrible motion sickness when I try. I need to be able to watch the world go by.

TFW...

...you can't figure out how to finish your story for a competition and the deadline is looming!

Murder Mystery Madness

Here's where things start to go wrong: At the start! 

I haven't written crime fiction before.  I want to expand my skillset though,  so I want to enter competitions that challenge me to build on what I'm good at. A two thousand word story may not seem like a challenge to some but to me, in that genre, I might as well be starting from scratch.

OK, not exactly from scratch but I don't know much about structuring crime thrillers except that there has to be a twist. The twist is both very specific and wide open. Anthony Horowitz says it should be possible to see it coming or you are cheating the reader. But if it's too easy to get you have also cheated the reader. Mysteries, especially murder mysteries, are best when they're seen in the rear view mirror as you speed away, hoping that you have done enough to cover your tracks.

But I have an idea and I think it's a pretty good one. I have written 2/3 of the first draft and stopped.

Why did you stop?!

Good question reader. I stopped because I realised I didn't have enough space to write the ending I want. Then the doubt crept in and devalued what I had already written. Now I have to re-evaluate the entire thing for my peace of mind.

It seems foolish.

If I'd had my wits about me I probably would have pushed through the draft and worries about the final story later, but doubt is a heavy thing to carry through a story, so I find I need to put it down before I go on.

Bury it, as it were, where nobody will ever find it...

... until next time.

Tis Done

I couldn't really hold off anymore, so the story is submitted. I hope it does ok, but I won't hold my breath. In truth, I'm not happy with the title I chose, but it will work out or it won't.

If I even got to the final I'd be amazed. But, hey, let the judges judge me, because I've never been very good at measuring my good and bad writing. 

Title Indeed

A bad pun of a title, but it leads directly into what I want to talk about.

Normally when I start writing a story I get a title and an outline idea straight away. This isn't a boast: these can sometimes become a straight jacket for the story and I can find it hard to break away from my original, bright, shining idea that spurned me into writing in the first place. The advantage, though, is that I have something to work with and can build on that.

Queue my February writing challenge. I decided (as I've mentioned before) to enter one competition a month this year. January is behind me and February is running out of time on me. But, there's the thing: I have the story written. It has changed significantly from the unusual ghost story it started with to the story of a young boy's breakdown in the face of his family's grief at the loss of an infant. Not a pleasant story, but I found my brain wandering to the theme of grief and it's effects on people and that's where my story went.

But I never got a title.

This is very strange for me. Titles are usually not a problem for me at all. I now find myself with three days to go and I have a story with no title. I don't even have a working title. I don't know what to do with this situation.

Any advice will be gratefully received in the comments.