It’s spring and a time to refresh and renew. For me, the new year starts now, not in the depths of January when the mornings are still dark and cold. (Not that it ever gets THAT cold where I live, I grant you.)
As I head into a summer of industry, I’m queuing up a number of writing projects to work on, all short stories (although I might toss a novella in there, too.) Short stories are intensely difficult for me but I enjoy the discipline and challenge of limited word count, and I also revel in the uncommon (for me) situation of having completed a piece of writing. (Is it good? No good? Who cares! It’s done! — is sort of my general feeling of relief and satisfaction around that.)
I struggle most with endings. (Maybe that’s why I tend to write long? I keep writing until the ending comes, and it takes its time in coming around?) I don’t like the “but they were all ghosts the entire time!”-style twist (some writers can do that, but I can’t seem to without being totally cheesy.) I do want the reader to gasp at the end, though. Gasp with wonder, horror, delight, or grief.
My short stories have also become magical realist semi-autobiographies and I’m not really sure why. I suspect it has to do with my application of playcentric design principles and mining my own memories for specific feelings.
List of projects I’m working on:
The Magic of a Japanese Convenience Store. A fantasy based on a memory of visiting my mother in Japan, with demons and ghosts of drowned Christian martyrs. First half (?) sent to critique group.
A House Full of Voices is Never Empty. A flash fiction piece about hoarding.
The Tower. A sci-fi riff on Rapunzel, with robots and monsters.
The Pilot’s Wife. A space-faring love story about a woman looking for her wife.
Completed and submitted:
Romero is Rosemary in Spanish. Sci-fi dystopian love story.
The Tengu by the River. A historical fantasy set in Taiwan in 1933.