At any rate, I have been doing some writing (and a lot of reading). As noted, I wrote a novel in November, inspired by the story of a stalker. I wanted to write from his perspective, chasing the girl, not excusing his behavior or justifying his actions, but trying to show what makes him tick. At the same time, the stalker is writing a sci-fi novel of his own (in real life, he wrote a fantasy novel), so I was writing this science fiction story at the same time, trying to parallel/contrast the events in real life, or use it as his way of dealing with the things that were happening to him. It...well, it's a work in progress. Part of the problem is that I think there is a slim grey area between hopeless unrequited love and stalking, and I see a lot of myself in this character (though not so much the real life stalker). I mean, I've never tracked people down, or studied their schedule to meet up with them "accidentally", but I have fixated on people, and built up relationships in my own head into something more than they were.
The other problem is that it is tough, at least for me, to write a story based around a non-sympathetic character. He is a stalker. He might not start out that way, but that's what he becomes. The story is in the first person (in the vein of blog posts), so there's nothing from the stalkee's POV. We're riding with this guy, watching him follow this woman around, spying on her, pursuing her, violating her privacy. Generally, the reader is supposed to be rooting for the main character, right? Well, I don't want the reader rooting for this guy. Maybe I should make them root for him to change? I will have to think about this story further.
I also submitted another story to a Writer's Digest competition. Last summer, I entered "Folded" in their Short Story competition, and didn't win. This past February, I whipped off a story for their "Short Short Story" competition. 1500 words or less. Sounds like my style of writing, right? I decided to give it a try, because it is a good challenge. I came up with a concept, threw together a quick first draft, revised, revised, and revised some more. With a story so short, it was easy to read through and make changes. The hard part was not rambling.
I got it done, and submitted on the final day. A few weeks later, I found myself thinking about the story, and wondering when I'd hear back. I couldn't remember the exact day mentioned in the rules, but I knew it was close. When I got back to my desk and checked my e-mail, sure enough, there was an e-mail from the contest committee.
Womp womp.Greetings and thank you once again for competing in The Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition.
As a courtesy, we wanted to inform you that after much difficult decision making (there were over 6,500 entries), judging has wrapped up. We've now been in touch with all winners; they were notified separately by our editors.
Honestly, my actual thought that day was, "I wonder when I'll hear that my story lost the competition". Last year, I thought "Folded" might have a chance. This time, the more I thought about what I'd submitted, the more I cringed. I can't believe I put that out into the world and let people read it. I can't believe I paid to enter it into a contest. I can't believe I asked judges to read it and consider this the best of what I have to offer.
Although, maybe it is. Maybe I'm just mediocre, never progressing past what I wrote in college. I don't know. The story was crappy. Pretentious, trying to make a point about a social issue, but using a different social issue as a metaphor. An unnamed protagonist, a hazy back story, a hazy current story (that's never good), and a conclusion that rendered the rest of everything pointless. I'm not even going to post it here, unless I revise it heavily. I'm that embarrassed by it.
In more upbeat news, I am still working on "Empty Moon" (a rewrite that is taking much longer than anticipated; I thought I knew what I wanted to do, but it is seeming like it will become either a much longer story, or need to be rethought...again), and I do plan on posting that at some point in the future. I'm also working on something new, the seed of which came to me in a dream. Those always work out great, right? We'll see. It might go nowhere (like my writing career...sorry, couldn't resist).
Oh, I almost forgot! This November, while taking part in NaNoWriMo, I also contributed to GrammoWriMo, Grammarly's attempt to write a collaborative NaNo novel about the eruption of Mt Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii. About 500 writers contributed, and while we didn't reach the 50,000 word goal, we did put together a collection of vignettes about the disaster, which will be published. I will post details about that if/when it is available.
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