Short story – “Plans”

“Plans”

Around the beginning of October, Anna had decided that after years of erratic work, 2025 would be The Year of Finishing Her Novel.  Her plan had been to wait until the holiday madness had passed, before hunkering down to write her still untitled magnum opus.  But then in November that utterly deplorable … thing (Anna couldn’t bring herself to call it human) was elected. 

The normal joys of the season were replaced with the heavy bitterness knowing this could very well be “The Last Happy Christmas.” As such, Anna had barely written anything for two months.  But in the “Final Days of Sanity,” she steeled herself to get to work.  The first thing she needed to do was clean up her desktop.  Carol had often said that it looked like something had exploded in her computer, but Anna insisted the dozens of documents for Human Characters, Alien Characters, Technology, etc. were all laid out in a bizarrely organized fashion.  Although, if pressed, the only organization she could actually point to was that they were all there on the desktop.

But now she dragged all of those files into a new Novel folder, and moved it to the corner in hopes of better days.  Anna had to use her writing skills for the good of all, because now 2025 had to be The Year to Fight For Freedom.

Random Writing Tips – Rewriting the same story

 

Twenty some years ago, I bought a book – probably at a library book sale – of the collected short stories of this author.  I can’t remember which author it was, but I’m pretty sure he had been active back in the 50’s and 60’s, and I think I’d read a few of his novels, so he wasn’t a complete unknown to me. 

About halfway through the book, I’m reading a story and thinking, I’ve read this before.  At first I figured it had been in some other collection, but then I realized that no, it was this collection like ten stories ago.  I forget exactly what the stories were, but it was something like these aliens arrive on Earth and there’s some misunderstanding with the first humans they meet.  All the names were different, and like one was set in Iowa with these blue-skinned humanoids aliens while the other was set in Florida with these purple dog aliens.  But the basic story was the same.  And then, another ten stories or so later, there was a third version of the story.  I believe, the book had a listing of where all these stories had been published, and I’m pretty sure the three appeared in different magazines over a period of five or six years.

I don’t know how frequently this happens to other writers, but often I’ll have an idea and the plot comes to a fork.  Sometimes, after some thought it is obvious that one fork is better than the other, but sometimes both options are equally good.  So I’ve written two, or more, stories from the same initial idea, but I always made them different stories.  Like someone could read them and see similarities, but they’d never be confused thinking they had already read one of them. 

At first, when I saw this well-known author doing something that seemed a bit shady, I felt a little betrayed.  I don’t know if the guy was desperate for money and needed to make a sale so he just quickly rewrote something, or if there was some aspect of the story that really spoke to him so he wrote new versions of it every few years as his skill improved.  It’s hard to say. 

I bring all this up because the constant jumbling of stuff in my head randomly brought back this memory.  And I realized that painters often paint the same thing multiple times to get the best version.  The same for photographers, and film makers, and artists of all kinds.  So why not writers?  Why shouldn’t we write the same story over and over again, honing our craft and getting the best version? 

It’s something I hadn’t really thought about before.  But now I think I might look up some of my earliest stories and rewrite them.  Just to see what my, hopefully, better skill can make of them.

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Image from Pixabay.

My writing plans for 2025

A couple months ago, I made a decision about my writing plans for 2025.  Part of my 2024 plans had been to post a story each month on my website, one each month on my Ko-fi profile, and one every other month on one of my blogs.  The ones on my website I would get the idea, write it, and post it that month, while the others were either new ones I could write in advance, or revised stories.  So that’s thirty stories, about half of which were new.  Turns out, between everything else going on in my life, meeting those goals took most of my writing energy and I barely had any to work on other projects.  So my plan had been to stop the monthly stories and just post stories on my blogs whenever I felt like it, and put all my focus on two big projects. 

The first project would be to finish up Lunar Dreams, which is a collection of essays I have on colonizing the moon.  I’ve been working on it for a year-and-a-half, but I’ll work on it for a month or so, and then decide to take it in a new direction.  Then I work on it for another month or so, and then decide to take it in a new-new direction.  And then after a couple of months, to take it in a revised-old-new direction.  But I think I’ve finally figured out where I’m going with it.  So I just need to hammer out a few details, and give it a good polish.  Once I finished that, then I would get around to finishing Volume One of The Pathfinder Saga.  This is two novellas and a short story.  The first novella I started … over ten years ago and is 90% done, but I originally wrote it to be a standalone story.  The second novella is 70% done, and I’ve barely started the short story.  I’ve tried working to update the first novella before, but my plan had been to work on it every Wednesday and Thursday and that didn’t turn out so well.  This is a fantasy story, and while I just “understand” scifi stuff like starships and hyperspace, I need to immerse myself in the story to keep how the magic works and what creatures can do what.  And just doing that a couple days a week wasn’t working.  My hope was by focusing on the setting for months at a time I’d finally finish it.

Then the election happened.  My plans had been made with the expectation that the country wouldn’t be driven off a cliff by lunatics.  Now I need to spend some of my writing energy fighting a fall into a fascist dystopia.

My current plan is to still write a story each month on my website.  Before, I’d come up with the story and write it that month, but I waived that self-imposed rule at the end of 2024, so I’m doing away with it entirely.  This is helpful, because as I type this up at the end of December, I already have the January and February stories mostly finished.  I just need to give them a good polish.  I also have another story where I already have the framework, I just need to fill it all out, which I’m having a bit of trouble with.  This was to be the January story, but now I’ll have a few more months to work on it.  In the past, some of these Monthly Stories had been of a political or social nature, but I’d also throw in some fun ones.  But going forward, they will probably all be of a political or social nature. 

As to Ko-fi, I’m keeping my account, but I’m not planning on posting much there.  The point of posting a story every month was to try to get some traction to maybe start making money there, but that didn’t happen.  Maybe in the future, we’ll see.

I also plan on posting a story each month on one of my blogs.  These will likely be revised stories, or maybe some new fun ones. 

In 2024 I posted over thirty stories and was a bit burned out.  I had planned on only posting a couple while “relaxing” working on my big projects.  And now I’m planning on posting at least twenty-four stories, finishing Lunar Dreams and making some headway on The Pathfinder Saga, while hoping the country doesn’t collapse.  I have the sinking suspicion that 2025 will end with me even more burned out. 

Writing Newsletter Fourth Quarter 2024

This quarter I continued writing a story each month on my website, publishing, “What is it?,” “A Possibility?,” and “A Noble Act.” I also reposted “In My Day,” “Moving On,” and “There’s a Cream for that” on my Ko-fi profile.  I also posted the story “Spooky Story” and reposted “Did You Think Otherwise?” on one of my blogs.

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I forgot to count how many microfiction stories and haikus I posted this quarter.  That’s something I’ll have to keep better track of.  But all of microfiction stories can be found on my Untitled Works Page, and all my haikus on my Haiku Page.

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A day or two after I post this, I’ll also post my writing plans for 2025, which will go over some changes I’m making.

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Image from Pixabay.

My thoughts on Doctor Who “Joy to the World”

These are just some random thoughts I had on “Joy to the World.” I don’t have a system to give it a grade, but I’d say on a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a … 5ish.  There is a near-certainty that I will never watch it again, and in a few months I’ll probably be hard pressed to remember the plot.

Spoilers.

What I liked.

Fifteen or twenty years ago, I came up with a story idea of a Doctor-like character who travels through time losing a bet and having to live for a year like a normal person.  They get a job and possibly start dating a coworker.  I’m not saying “Joy to the World” stole my idea, because it is highly unlikely someone broke into my house, dug out an old writing notebook, found this specific page, and was able to decipher my horrible handwriting to get that basic description, because that’s basically all the work I put into the idea.  Also, just seeing The Doctor trying to live as a normal person is a pretty basic idea.  We’ve seen parts of this in previous episodes.  Sometimes these are either short time periods or are just mentioned in passing, like I believe in “Blink” The Doctor and Martha are stuck in 1969 and she’s a tad upset she had to get a job to support him, but that’s about all we get.  Other times there is some epic story thing going on, like I believe one of the Smith Christmas episodes has The Doctor in Christmas Town for a … century, or something.  (I have a vague memory of this, but don’t care enough to look it up.)

Anyway, I liked the idea of The Doctor living out a year in normal time.  In fact, I would have preferred an entire episode of The Doctor trying to figure out the solution to some problem while also dealing with some eccentric characters one can find in a neighborhood. 

I guess I also liked that they at least acknowledged that “Global Event That Must Not Be Named.” (I can’t remember if they actually named it in the episode.  If they did, I wasn’t really paying attention, but if they didn’t name it, we all knew what it was.) Although, I guess the world of Doctor Who isn’t our world, like, I don’t remember the time everyone was turned into The Master. 

What I didn’t like.

First off, why didn’t the first guy go in, say he needed to speak to the manager, and have the briefcase hook on to the manager, and then – knowing that they needed millions of years – go directly to the dinosaur room instead of futzing around in the human era stuff?

So Anita was like the tenth or so companion to basically fall madly in love with The Doctor?  Also, hasn’t The Doctor been told a dozen or so times by now that they shouldn’t be alone and they should find someone?  I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with those – like the later does show that even the smartest people might not readily take good advice because they think they know better – but it does seem like this template is being used too often. 

As soon as they mentioned something about creating a star, I knew where this was going.  I think they then did the Anita stuff, so I kind of forgot about it for twenty minutes or so, but when it came back I was going, “Please don’t be so obvious, please don’t be so obvious,” but in the end they were. 

Final thoughts

There were basically two parts to this episode.  The part with Joy and the star was … meh.  The part with Anita I liked the concept, but would have liked more, especially if they did something else with it.  Like, maybe Anita had a bit of a crush on the person who ran the whatever store next-door.  And over the year – while he’s working on solving some problem – The Doctor’s helping her build up her confidence to ask them out.  And you could have had a sappy, “Nobody deserves to be alone on Christmas,” and then someone could ask, “Who will you be with, Doctor?” And after a moment, he’ll laugh and say something silly, then step into the TARDIS with some sad music, and then … the TARDIS will be rammed by the Titanic again, or whatever will lead into the next episode and companion.

Random Writing Tips – Using common words for weird things

Over a year ago, I wrote a post on why writers should Chill on the weird words.  The basic idea, is if you jump right into a story and have characters drinking regilum and eating roasted glarthen all in celebration of Clathenmas Eve, you’ll end up with a lot of readers who are more confused than engrossed in the story.  Using weird words isn’t bad, it’s pretty standard in fantasy and science fiction after all, but if you use too many of them too quickly, you run the risk of the readers not knowing what is going on in the story, which is generally a bad thing.  You can use glossaries so you don’t have characters explaining the meaning of words they should likely already know, but there is a difference between learning a few weird words and learning a weird language.  Like most things in writing and life, there are balances that need to be found.

Anyway, I was thinking about this the other day and realized you can have the opposite issue: using common words for weird things.  I was able to think of an example, but it wasn’t that great of an example.  So instead, I came up with this extreme, hypothetical example to show what I mean.

Imagine a book where in Chapter 1 we’re introduced to Queen Whoever.  You would naturally assume that Whoever was the ruler of some kingdom.  But in Chapter 2, the Queen receives an order from some Emperor.  Well, maybe this empire conquered the kingdom, and in return for bending the knee the royal family was allowed to remain in charge of this area of the empire.  Then in Chapter 3 we learn that Queen is just the title of the head of the Emperor’s Dragon Guard.  Okay, so maybe this conquered kingdom was known for their dragon riders, and the royal bloodline was allowed to remain as the head.  But in Chapter 4 we learn anyone can work their way up through the ranks of the Dragon Guard to become Queen.  At this point we wonder why didn’t the author come up with some other word, maybe Clethex or something, to be the title for the head of the Dragon Guard in honor of Clethex the Brave, the first Dragon Rider. 

Sometimes, misleading terms can be used to set up a joke, or as a red herring, or whatever.  Like, if you’re writing a post-apocalypse story, I’m sure there will be plenty of current terms and slang that will have their meanings warp in their world.  Like, maybe they use netflix to mean die, because they found something about “Netflix and chill,” and they know that after you die, your body grows cold.  That may seem convoluted, but explain how “Netflix and chill” came about.  In other types of stories, if you use a common word for something weird, the readers will either be confused wondering what they’re missing, or waiting for a punchline.  And if you don’t deliver on either, it can leave a bad taste. 

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Image from Pixabay.

Writing in these dark times

I recently had an idea for a story.  Some 10,000 years from now, humanity is on the verge of extinction – for reasons – and they use all of their knowledge and the last of their resources to build a time machine to send someone back to tell us we need to change the path we’re on.  Not a terribly original idea – I think I’ve already written four or five stories like that – but the way this person arrives in our time was kinda new. 

I started thinking about it, and quickly realized that there will be a lot of history between now and then.  They’re not going to come back and just say, “To change your path you need to support this politician’s bill,” or whatever.  They might show up and be confused that the Roman Empire isn’t still around, or be like, “Oh, I guess this is before Nigeria took over the world.”

So what future message would they give to help us?  I played around with this for a while, and that was when I ran into an issue.  Maybe ten or so years ago, just the message, “The path you are on leads to our extinction,” would probably bring enough of us around to try to make the world a better place.  But now, it seems the more likely result would be, “How dare you say we are on the wrong path!” Do you really think the people that willingly voted for a convicted felon would heed warnings? 

Working through how this person would arrive and what message they could give us was fun; it was the joy of creation we get when we write.  But that joy was tainted by the bitter reality we currently find ourselves in.  And I almost threw this idea on the “Interesting idea, but not worth spending time writing it” pile, but the idea didn’t want to give up that easily.  Originally, I figured the original story would have to be a novella, at least.  But if I can figure out how to get it down to a short story, I’ll put it on the list of stories I want to write over the next few years as part of my Sisyphean task of rolling our reality towards a better world.  It is, as they say, “Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness,” and sometimes, those candles take the form of stories.