Good news, squiders, I have made a decision about which story to use for the Luddite challenge.
(Also, How to Submit and Publish is now live! Hooray! Success! And I finished the presentations for my next SkillShare class, so I just need to record the videos.)
(I’m getting a ton of new students over at SkillShare. I assume it’s because everyone is bored and learning new things due to being stuck at home, but it’s cool all the same.)
Anyway! Last week we talked about the Luddite Challenge and how I’d picked out two potential stories, yet neither of them was working.
(The Luddite Challenge, as a refresher, is where you handwrite a story instead of using your normal technology.)
I poked both stories some more and even discussed them with a friend, but they still weren’t working. (One was planned out but I wasn’t feeling it, and the other had so many potential ways the story could go that I couldn’t pin down an actual story.)
So I gave up on both of them. Another time, I guess.
I poked around in my Google Drive, where I have several stories in various stages of planning, as well as lists of premises that could be stories if I poked at them, etc. And I found one!
So, way back in 2014, Turtleduck Press put out an anthology called Under Her Protection. The idea was to write fantasy stories where the girl saved the guy rather than vice versa. My story for the anthology, Drifting, is a fairy tale-esque story about a girl who goes through a portal, like many in her family before her, in an attempt to rescue a prince.
When the anthology was coming together, the editor asked me to expand the ending a bit–just a few sentences–but I ran into an issue. When I tried to expand, instead of getting a few sentences, I got a whole novel.
(Not, like, specifics. But sometimes an idea will blossom and I can see the general shape of it and how long it will take to form into said shape. A little annoying because they don’t generally come with enough information to start writing.)
So the ending stayed put, I wrote down some notes about a potential sequel novel, and then I went off on my merry way.
I’d honestly forgotten about it, though it is on my massive list of novel ideas that I glance at before each Nano (normally before choosing something completely different), but when I found it again, it clicked.
I re-read the original story, wrote down some notes and a very vague outline, and started writing.
So far so good. And it feels great to get back to a story I’d always meant to write.
Fingers crossed.
How are you doing? Anything coming together for you?
