Grotesquerie

Total written today: 2301 words
Total written to date: 2301 words
Goal: N/A
Percentage to goal: 100%

This story was actually written over three days and the first I have finished in over a year. I am hoping I can gain some momentum with this story and finish three others that I have started over the past few months.

Here’s a link to the story if you want to read it.

A separate posting to cover the other writing activity I did on this day. For the first time in nearly a year, I opened up the ‘Rust’ file and read the first 3000 or so words that I wrote to begin the novel last year. I was surprisingly pleased with what I read, and I think that the beginning held up well between when I wrote it and reading it now. I worked on the outline a bit and refreshed my memory of where I wanted to take this book, and it all came back to me with relative ease. I plan on keeping the story close, floating it through my internal editor and be fully ready to pick up where I left off once I finish The Escapist Society. I may try working on multiple projects at once to see if I can write a scene in a short story and then switch to my novel once I finish that. If there is a way I can write multiple scenes a day in this manner, that might speed up my writing process. Stay tuned!

Total written today: 868 words
Total written to date: 1901 words
Goal: 5000 words
Percentage to goal: 38%

For the first time, basically this year, I sat down to write as I did last year (The Orphan of Ulthar notwithstanding, but I am not counting that story as it was written for someone else and my process on that story was different than my usual outings). It has been so long since I had seriously sat down to work that I had forgotten how my writing process worked and realized that despite my wish to finish the story in a day, my writing brain doesn’t really work that way most of the time. I have the ideas in my head and know what is going to happen all the way to the end, but I am limited for some reason to writing the immediate scene at hand…and once that scene ends, I (usually) have to stop there. That is what happened today.

I believe that I have only one more (perhaps two) sittings in front of the laptop to finish this story. The remaining scene may be split into two, but I have not yet entirely figured that out.

Total written today: 3441 words
Total written to date: 3441 words
Goal: N/A
Percentage to goal: N/A

After a delay of many months, I finally was able to see a story through to completion (my first of the year, sadly). It was a sequel to H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Cats of Ulthar’ entitled ‘The Orphan of Ulthar’. I think it turned out pretty well considering it’s not the type of thing I usually write. If anything, it leans more towards Dunsany than Lovecraft, but it was fun to write and came rather easily. It was a gift for a friend, so at least I know it has a good home

I do have two others in progress I may try to finish now. We’ll see how it goes. I’m nearing 3/4 completion of ‘The Escapist Society’ and was at about the halfway point of ‘Zoltara’ when I put it down a few months ago. I know how both will end though, so it’s just a matter of sitting at the keyboard. Maybe this weekend.

Still formulating the story I am (kind of) working on, not fully ready to flesh it out yet, when the following came to me:

For as long as I can remember being interested in writing and hearing about how others write, and what their stories ‘meant’, I always wondered….why does a beast at the bottom of the pit have to be anything other than a big monster with razor sharp teeth? Why does it have to be a metaphor for something? Why does every literary critic have to invent an analogy for every story? Why can’t a story just be a story on its own?

Until recently, that’s how I wrote. I wrote stories for fun, because they were what I would want to read. Then something happened, and I realized that perhaps those great storytellers were onto something (if there were, in fact, hidden meanings in their tales). Maybe they had their own story to tell, literally, but instead of coming out with it as-is, they couched it deep withing the bowels of make believe, in a mysterious, crumbling house or a figure in the shadows. Or a peek into the abyss.

I guess I’m a slow learner.

Wrote a little bit today. I hate poetry, but this came to me this afternoon, so here it is.

Insidious

Swirling, sprawling, crawling chaos
Coaxes the smallest shadows
Hiding in the remotest corners
Of the brightest sunlit room.

A deviousness so subtle
So ranging, so pervasive
Movements so soft, so quiet and small
It’s touch evading perception

Smooth, mirthless laughter
Echoes in the little room
A slow cacophany of confusion
Building to a destructive peak

The dark tendrils become a blanket
Tightly woven
A shroud against sight
Against escape into the light

I’ve finally begun writing again….but I am hesitant to enter a progress report just yet for my new short story ‘The Escapist Society’. I want to see if I can get into it this weekend before getting ahead of myself tracking my progress here. I also have a couple of tales that were paused over the past few months: ‘Zoltara’ and ‘The Orphan of Ulthar’ that I’d like to finish. The plan is to finish up these three stories, then get back into my second novel ‘Rust’. Speaking of rust, I’m certainly a bit rusty in the writing arena, but I think it won’t take long to work out the kinks. I’ve been reading more lately, which is helping to shake off the cobwebs and get back to my center.

I bought some art supplies the other day and have started to get back into sketching too, so we’ll see how that goes.

Over The Edge, Arkham House

Just finished reading this anthology released in 1964 by Arkham House, Edited by August Derleth, which was compiled to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Arkham House books. The authors included in this collection is an impressive list of ‘who’s who’ in the weird fiction genre, even if one were to remove H.P. Lovecraft from the list, given that ‘The Shadow in the Attic’ attributed to Lovecraft was penned by Derleth.

This is an interesting and eclectic collection of stories spanning several corners of the genre including everything from country folk (Crabgrass by Jesse Stuart) to science fiction (When The Rains Came by Frank Belknap Long) to the superb semi-weird tale of lost love (Told in the Desert by Clark Ashton Smith).

All in all, I enjoyed this collection of stories that I might not otherwise have read, especially in the case of the Smith tale, which will have me searching out more of his stories, which I have sadly neglected in my past reading. Calling this a collection of ’stories of the macabre’ may be a stretch, but there is some of that inside. Just don’t expect every story to be that.

As an aside, it’s nice to be reading again. I have missed it, and writing.

Fast Tube by Casper

More to come, I believe.

Finally.

Total written today: 575 words
Total written to date: 1377 words
Goal: Approximately 5,000 words
Percentage to goal: 28%

Holy crap I have been deficient in updates, not to mention getting some actual work done. I will attempt to rectify this today, with the completion of a small amount of progress on the story I started in San Mateo. Unlike when I began the story, there is a definite ending in sight now, and I just need to get there. I’m not sure my protagonist will appreciate it when I do, however.