Draft zero.
Just finished a short story, which I'll be reading at the writers' group tonight.
It's been . . . I don't even know how long it's been since I finished something. Years. And I've never been a writer of short stories. So, even if I'd been merrily noveling away all this time, this would be something of an accomplishment.
And it's a really good short story, too. It's very drafty, but once it's polished I think it will stand up as one of the best things I've ever written. I surprised myself with how much it wound up meaning to me. I usually spend a long, long time with my characters before I ever write about them, so of course I care about them. This time I had to hit the ground running to make a deadline, plotting as I went, and didn't expect to like my main character as much as I do.
True story: I was kicking ideas around for a couple of weeks, but nothing had really come together, and I was getting really frustrated. Then I turned around in a waiting room and I saw this utterly striking woman. Forty, pushing fifty, very long and tall, long dark hair, dressed incredibly stylishly all in black with a long black fur-collared coat that was somewhere between Russian and nautical in style.
And she had this amazing face. Great, proud nose and wonderfully expressive features, and all of these lines all over, settled right at that moment into a general expression of determination and sadness. She looked like she'd seen everything. She wasn't young, her age was written all over her and had probably never been "pretty," but she was absolutely gorgeous and I immediately started telling the story I saw written in her face.
Turned out she was a sky pirate captain in a steampunk western. Who knew?
In a culture with saner standards of beauty, women like that would be considered as awesome as men like Sean Connery or Clint Eastwood, older gentlemen whose faces have "character." She was definitely the kind of woman you see and think to yourself, "I will never see another woman like her again." And you are right, you never do.
I hope that's the kind of woman I told a story about.
It's been . . . I don't even know how long it's been since I finished something. Years. And I've never been a writer of short stories. So, even if I'd been merrily noveling away all this time, this would be something of an accomplishment.
And it's a really good short story, too. It's very drafty, but once it's polished I think it will stand up as one of the best things I've ever written. I surprised myself with how much it wound up meaning to me. I usually spend a long, long time with my characters before I ever write about them, so of course I care about them. This time I had to hit the ground running to make a deadline, plotting as I went, and didn't expect to like my main character as much as I do.
True story: I was kicking ideas around for a couple of weeks, but nothing had really come together, and I was getting really frustrated. Then I turned around in a waiting room and I saw this utterly striking woman. Forty, pushing fifty, very long and tall, long dark hair, dressed incredibly stylishly all in black with a long black fur-collared coat that was somewhere between Russian and nautical in style.
And she had this amazing face. Great, proud nose and wonderfully expressive features, and all of these lines all over, settled right at that moment into a general expression of determination and sadness. She looked like she'd seen everything. She wasn't young, her age was written all over her and had probably never been "pretty," but she was absolutely gorgeous and I immediately started telling the story I saw written in her face.
Turned out she was a sky pirate captain in a steampunk western. Who knew?
In a culture with saner standards of beauty, women like that would be considered as awesome as men like Sean Connery or Clint Eastwood, older gentlemen whose faces have "character." She was definitely the kind of woman you see and think to yourself, "I will never see another woman like her again." And you are right, you never do.
I hope that's the kind of woman I told a story about.