Hello!
An unexpected burst of creativity. I’d finished the sixth, and longest, Engineer story (see previous #AmWriting post) and was taking a breather to build up the energy and ideas for the next one.
Suddenly, I had an idea for a novella: almost the entire story came to me in a few minutes. I wrote it down as a synopsis. Unlike the last time I wrote a synopsis, when I was daunted by the scale of the task in front of me, this one acted as a spur. I immediately wrote a thousand words. Then another thousand. Now, just over three weeks later, I have over 20,000 words and fifty pages. It has inevitably grown, in that the novella is now a story-within-a-story.
How have I written so fast? Well, I’m normally old-school and use paper and pen. This time I typed straight into Word and I’ve rarely, if ever, written with such speed and facility. Naturally, it made me doubt the quality – nothing written this fast can be any good, surely? – but I’m not listening to the doubts.
I love writing Engineer stories: he’s fun to write and his universe is expanding in ways I’m finding surprising and satisfying. But it was nice to write something (very) different.
The problem I have now (and there are worse problems) is knowing when to stop. Every story has its own size, and I want to strike a balance so it isn’t spread too thin – making it longer, assuming length = publishability – but also says everything it needs to say.
Into the Gyre 