Clarion Day 3.5 - Thoughts on My First Sub

So Kelly was super-cool about allowing us to work on our first week story a little bit ahead of time. So one week before I started Clarion, I started my first story. Almost 2 weeks later, I'm still working on it. This does not bode well for my goal of writing 6 stories in 6 weeks. Simply, I'm a sloooooooow writer, especially for short stories. I need lots of time to think about my characters, what kind of world do they live in, what kind of problems are they facing, how those problems will resolve, if at all.

Add that to this my "brilliant" idea of embracing my weaknesses and challenging myself. Normally I write rather traditionally structured stories. I like stories with a distinct beginning, middle, and end. I like stories with a clear arc. I like stories featuring characters who I want to believe are actually alive. So for my first story, I decided to play with the form and incorporate a few poems to go along with the prose. And then I decided to write a modernization of an ancient Chinese legend. And then, after realizing that no one would get any of the references, I decided to include the legend in my story. Talk about too many moving parts.

But I have to say that while some of the creative process was a bit painful, I did really enjoy dreaming this one up.

I need to speed up if I want to be happy with my submission for week 2. So my next story will be short and snappy, something I'm extremely comfortable with.