I remember a time when 10,000 words was an enormous length for a piece of writing.  I remember a time when all I wrote was short stories - not with any great frequency (and apparently not with correct use of apostrophes looking back).

Some time in the past tenyears I have shifted into novel writing mode.  Again, not at a startling pace, but when I think about writing and when I sit down to do it the things I've been working on have been novel length (2 complete manuscripts, 1 discontinued, 1 in progress).  10,000 words is no longer long.

Then this year I started to think about short story ideas again.  In part it was a result of mr_orgue embarking on a 12 stories in 12 months plan and sending Debbie and me some of his inspirational drafts.  jenni_talula has sent us some of her short fiction.  Then there was a short story competition I wanted to enter.  Then there was the September Zing Thing.  Now it seems my brain has kicked into short story mode and I'm actively thinking and scheming about ideas for short fiction to write, and scoping out places to submit to.

It's a very pleasant thing to begin a piece of writing and be able to finish it in a day or two.  After the endurance game of novel writing it's fun to sprint :-)

The Event, a collaborative fiction project I’ve been working on with Debbie, Steph, Chris and Jenni, is moving into its final phase. We planned to write 5 parts each, moving through the stages of a major event in Wellington. The plan was to establish the characters in part one, have the event hit in part two, see the characters coping with catastrophe in part three, the immediate aftermath in part four and picking up the pieces in part five. Before we began the only story elements we set in place were that there was something in the water, at first people were drawn to it, then later they would be running away from it.

That’s it. Otherwise, blank slate.

What’s it been like to write without a road map, and with other writers throwing escalating horror into the mix? Fantastic. Absolutely awesome.

Because I like lists, here’s a spoiler free list of why it’s been good and what I’ve learned:

• A ratio of one part writing to 4 parts reading other people’s stuff and being inspired by it is highly motivating.
• Seeing other people’s emphasis on establishing a realistic setting, including emotional quandaries, incorporating kiwiana or tackling challenging characters and unconventional writing styles helped me to reflect on my own writing and make some judgements about what my own strengths were.
• Having to juggle the plot details and horror elements introduced by other authors was a fun challenge that lead to some pretty full-on situations.
• Increasing the tension is a delicate balancing act between subtle cues and times when you want a huge leap in intensity. That contrast between incremental and overpowering jumps in intensity can be fun to play with.
• I like writing horror.
• What you don’t show can be as important as what you do.
• Being forced by your collaborators’ excellent writing to abandon your first ideas about where a story might go or what you want your character to do can lead to better, richer, more complex second ideas.
• I really, really like writing horror.
• Killing bystanders in horror writing is easy. Killing named characters was surprisingly uncomfortable.

Many of these ideas are explored in this post and its comments from NZSpecFicBlogWeek - http://rippatton.livejournal.com/29836.html

Today is the last day of NZ Spec Fic Blogging Week - a week which has given me a lot of interesting reading material and pointed me in the direction of some great writing fun.  Having now found and joined www.kiwiwriters.org I decided to jump into the September Zing Thing Challenge.  The challenge is to write and edit a short story this weekend using a set of ingredients.  I wrote my story yesterday, edited it this morning.  I plan to make a few changes before trying to find somewhere to send it.  Here's the current version:

 

( Recommended for mature audiences... )

There are 16 writers signed up to the challenge (Debbie is one of them and has completed it) so I will link to further stories as/when they're posted up.