This week I began writing a new short story.<\/p>\n
A friend e-mailed me (and several other writers) about an anthology he wanted to put together, and would I be interested in contributing? If I were, I’d have to write the story reallydamnfast.<\/p>\n
I wasn’t sure that I had a story, but sometimes the best way to find a story is to not go looking for it. As my workday wore on, I jotted down whatever ideas came to me on a notepad on my desk, and when I went for a walk on my lunchbreak the gears started snapping together.<\/p>\n
I wrote up quickly a rough pitch that was part outline, part description of the thematic ground I wanted to capture, part description of the story’s two major characters.<\/p>\n
Yesterday I started writing. First was a page of the story’s narrator talking about the story’s main character. Then came two pages of the narrator describing his own backstory. This morning I wrote out a page that described how certain things work in the story’s milieu. This evening on the train I wrote two pages of conversation between the two characters.<\/p>\n
Some of this writing may survive. Some of it may not. Right now I’m trying to get the voices right. I’m trying to figure out the headspace for this story.<\/p>\n
Tonight I’m going to work on an outline. Even though I can “see” the story beats in my head, I’d like to have them down on paper simply so I have a roadmap.<\/p>\n
And then, I’ll hammer the story out. I want to have it done by July 4th, which is right around the corner. Fast turnaround doesn’t scare me; it’s what I do.<\/p>\n
I won’t say much at the moment, except that this story is different. Different in the sense that it’s surprisingly normal. :h2g2:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week I began writing a new short story. A friend e-mailed me (and several other writers) about an anthology he wanted to put together, and would I be interested in contributing? If I were, I’d have to write the story reallydamnfast. I wasn’t sure that I had a story, but sometimes the best wayContinue reading “On Starting a New Short Story”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[4102],"class_list":["post-6501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-writing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}